Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir
By Steven Tyler
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
“Steven Tyler is one of the giants of American music, who’s been influential for a whole generation of Rock ’n’ Roll fans around the world. Long May He Rock!”
—Sir Paul McCartney
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? is the rock memoir to end all rock memoirs—the straight-up, no-holds-barred life of Grammy Award-winning, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and all around superstar legend Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith (and celebrity judge on American Idol). This is it—“the unbridled truth, the in-your-face, up-close and prodigious tale of Steven Tyler straight from the horse’s lips”—as Tyler tells all, from the early years through the glory days, “All the unexpurgated, brain-jangling tales of debauchery, sex & drugs. and transcendence you will ever want to hear.”
Steven Tyler
Born Steven Victor Tallarico on March 26, 1948, in Yonkers, New York, Steven Tyler is the iconic songwriter, composer, and voice of Aerosmith—America's greatest rock 'n' roll band—and is considered one of rock's most recognizable and dynamic frontmen. Rolling Stone magazine has cited him as one of the greatest singers of all time. After coming together in Sunapee, New Hampshire, in the late sixties, five musicians made the decision to move to Boston, live together, and become the band we know today as Aerosmith: Tyler as frontman, guitarist Joe Perry, bassist Tom Hamilton, guitarist Ray Tabano, later replaced by Brad Whitford, and drummer Joey Kramer. The band has sold more than 100 million records across the globe and won numerous prestigious awards—multiple Grammys, American Music awards, Billboard awards, and MTV awards—and was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Aerosmith has infiltrated rock history with their memorable appearances in Wayne's World and The Simpsons, at the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXV in 2001, and in their own Aerosmith version of Guitar Hero. Their number one single, "Don't Want to Miss a Thing," was nominated for an Academy Award for best song for the movie Armageddon. In December 2010, Tyler performed for President Obama and the First Lady in a special tribute to Sir Paul McCartney at the Kennedy Center Honors. In January 2011, Tyler joined Jennifer Lopez, Randy Jackson, and host Ryan Seacrest as a judge on the Fox TV phenomenon American Idol.
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Reviews for Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
163 ratings17 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As a huge Aerosmith fan, part of me worried this book would be self-indulgent, clearing Steven's own name while sullying everyone else's. Another part of me thought it would be all about his rock & roll decadence, drug problems, women. Walk The Way (the band's autobiography), but focused solely on Steven. I'll admit that part of me wanted that, to hear his side of the story and all the juicy gossip.
I didn't get it.
At first, I was disappointed. The narrative was scattered - a section on Steven's childhood veered off into discussing his own children. There was no timeline.
After a few pages, I was in. I got it. The stream-of-consciousness was originally distracting, but a polished narrative would have been moreso. This book is Steven talking to the reader. You can hear him, not the ghost writer, not an editor. He addresses his music, his career, the drugs, the women, but it's so much more. This gives me a feel for who he is more than any other autobiography I've read about anyone else. It's stream of consciousness, it's how he sees the world, it's what he thinks when he writes a song.
"STEVEN TYLER, an aging but well-preserved rock star moodily stares into space... He's talking into a digital tape recorder, which he barely knows how to operate." [jokingly (?) writing his movie script]
I think this is probably the most real autobiography I've read. Steven talked into a tape recorder; the ghost writer, David Dalton, transcribed it, maybe edited and organized it slightly. But I think Steven took it back, went through and made sure certain words were spelled phonetically so you could hear his voice, hear him burst into lyrics and rhymes, hear his signature scat, drag words out so you feel the weight of them. Much of the book is like this; it's very poetic, with rhymes and alliteration.
If Stephen Davis had come in and smoothed everything out, polished the tales and lined them up in chronological order, it would have been another Walk This Way. But what we have is Steven Tyler. To sum it all up, I would have to say this book is Steven Tyler, as opposed to being about Steven Tyler. If you want the stories from his life, read Walk This Way. If you want to get inside his head, read this.
A fun aside - while the cover looks typical, make sure you take off the dust jacket and check out what's underneath - shots of Steven in action like some sort of flipbook. It's pretty much the best thing ever.
Quotables
On his life: "Sometimes it feels like... all I'm doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the fucking Titanic."
On women: "She could bend over backward - my kinda girl - and she had a flat head where I could rest my beer."
On Joe's amp volume: "He'd play so loud, even Helen Keller could sing along."
On fame/the media: "...they're looking at me, and what they see is this Steven Tyler entity. I began to think of myself in the third person..."
"So go on, make it up! By now Steven Tyler is pretty much a fictional character anyway... I read about him and I don't know who it is."
On lyrics: "People ask me all these questions about 'Dream On.' 'What does it mean?' What do you mean, 'What does it mean?' It means Dream On. You figure it out. You're the one listening to it... make up your own meaning." - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wow. Okay. The title of this autobiography should be taken as a warning, or at least seriously considered by anyone thinking of reading Steven Tyler in his own words (I'm not sure how much Rolling Stone writer David Dalton contributed to making sense of the past, but I would hate to read the unedited version!) Tyler is everything you would expect of the 'Demon of Screamin' and more, way way more, but I will admit to skimming through some of his random ranting. A talented musician and an extraordinary frontman no doubt, but I would hate to be stuck in a lift with the guy.'Fucked-up voices with a ton of character - that's my idea of a great voice', Tyler writes, and that's how I would rank him personality wise too, up there with his idol Janis Joplin, only somehow the Aerosmith singer is still going 70 years on. Descended from Italian immigrant musicians and a pianist father, Steven Tyler has music in the blood, and his band, Aerosmith, came about the old-fashioned way, formed after various failed line-ups and then working their way up from school auditoriums and small clubs to becoming a successful 'multiplatinum band with four albums in the space of three years'. Tyler is a singer-songwriter who seems to truly understand music, often riding the others in the band - guitarist Joe Perry and the LI3 (Least Interesting 3, Joey Kramer, Brad Whitford and Tom Hamilton) - to the point where I wanted to punch him on their behalf. At least he admits to being a knob with 'Lead Singer Disease', though! Tyler also plays drums, piano and harmonica, so he's not just sound and fury. Or at least he wasn't.What the band is most famous for, however, is addiction. As he says, 'For the whole of the seventies, we were all nicely fucked-up and deep-friend'. Would they have been a better band for longer without the drugs and drink, or did that lifestyle make them who they are? After reading Steven's biography, I'm not sure. At least they're still going, forty years on, bar a few epic break-ups and stints in rehab.Should you take what Steven can recall of his past with a pinch of salt? Probably. 'Everybody likes to overblow their past, including me—to squeeze out the relevance of what may or may nothave really taken place', he says, including refuting certain claims in the memoirs of his bandmates and past wives and girlfriends. There are two sides to every story, I suppose, and at least Steven is talking about his own life and not waiting for some moneygrubbing 'biographer' to do so for him. He's very proud of his biggest hit, Dream On (admittedly my favourite song too), and repeats himself a lot, but Mr Tyler is definitely entertaining with a unique narrative voice. Worth a read. If you dare.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I was a little bit hard deciding on how many stars this book was gonna get. I made it 2 stars. The reasons for that were that I found the writing of the book a little bit hard to understand and follow. Mind you, my first language isn't English so it might be because of that I sometimes had a hard time understanding what he was saying and follow his sentences. It was jerky, a story within a story, hopping all over the place. The words and phrases all over the place - which on the other hand was cool 'cause it felt like Tyler was talking directly to you with his one words.
The book was... okay. I read it in a few days which says that I was interested and hooked to the story, 'cause I wanted to find out the happenings and it all about Aerosmith and all around it from Tyler's perspective. The beginning with his childhood was interesting - never would've guessed he was a nature boy. His spirituality and thoughts were interesting and sometimes thought worthy (but I found it a bit troublesome to see in his perspective of sex and cheating of wives while on tour). But I think I wanted to go deeper, find out more about himself and his thoughts. Sadly, I thought it was to focussed on sex and drugs. Rambling about the name of the drugs for several sentences. He got deep and interesting sometimes, but mostly it was about the general rock 'n roll life that's isn't big news.
For the Aerosmith fan, as myself, the book could be read and to some length enjoyed, but if you're not that big of a fan I don't think you have anything to get from reading this. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you've ever been caught singing "Dream On" while strumming on an air guitar and listening to your Walkman...; If you were one of those staring in hurt bewilderment at a Joe Perry Project logo stenciled into the sidewalk outside of the Narcissus nightclub in Boston...; If your heart soared at the sight of a flying piano... DOES THE NOISE IN MY HEAD BOTHER YOU? is for you!
Ostensibly the memoir of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, there is no denying that it has to be a history of the band as well if only because Steven Tyler has been the lead singer for over two-thirds of his life. DOES THE NOISE IN MY HEAD BOTHER YOU? is a recounting of a life of seeming cliche: drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll; but it is much more because it is the story of an icon who helped forge the cliche into the consciousness of every burgeoning American adolescent mind. The excesses described are not for the prudish. Hardly an apologia, Steve Tyler describes his rock 'n' roll lifestyle and the circuitous route to the man he is today. It's a fascinating look into Steven Tyler's mind, like dipping your toe into a stream of unconsciousness.
Jeremy Davidson does a remarkable job, for all that he is not Steven Tyler, of narrating this memoir. While purists may prefer authors to narrate their autobiographies, the choice of Jeremy Davidson is a solid one. Mr. Davidson has a more distinctive New York (?) accent than Steven Tyler, but the spirit of Steven Tyler's oral history is so strong, the free-form scat so distinctive, that the listener can hear Steven Tyler through Jeremy Davidson. Jeremy Davidson speaks clearly, attentively and, does not get in the way of the text.
There is a bit at the end if the book in which Steven Tyler talks about the book itself. While superficially seeming to be a free-associative ramble, the monologue is actually structured to highlight the key themes of the book. It also inadvertently gives props to David Dalton for organizing Steven Tyler's story into the book and, to Jeremy Davidson's clear rendition of the same text. Early in the listening experience of the memoir itself, one might think that Steven Tyler's words were tempered by either/both David Dalton and Jeremy Davidson; but it becomes clear in the monologue that both men served the text well and were about as transparent in delivering their respective trade crafts as you could want. Steven Tyler might have brought in some added value as the narrator of his own memoir, but while he could probably have gotten away with singing the lyrics embedded in the text; he wouldn't have been singing the whole text, i.e. Steven Tyler is a singer, not a narrator. His distinctively raspy voice and verbal pauses might not have worn well over the thirteen hours. It's also had to imagine him being tethered to his own text, even if he did write it himself!
Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?. 06/16/2011 - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bloody brilliant! So honest and raw, no holds barred, no holding back, tell it like it is! Just like The Steven we know and love! Sone of it was kind of out there, but then again, Steven Tyler is kinda out there!
This guy has so much heart and attitude. He has seen it and done it all and lived to tell about it. It took him a while, but he seems tto have found his way.
Way to go, Steven, keep it up! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Raw, unabashed, and funny; very much how I would expect Tyler to share his story!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This autobiographical account of Tyler's life is very illuminating, and brutally honest about what drugs do to a person's life. and what the celebrity lifestyle is really like. at times it is a bitter pill to swallow, and other chapters you sail through faster than a 30 second song. All in all it was a delightful read that allowed me into the mind of one of my favorite musicians.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Steven Tyler has a big, flashy personality and his book is no different. He tells it like it is, holding nothing back. We learn about his childhood, his personal life, the making of Aerosmith, his relationship with its members (particularly Joe Perry), his addictions and his songwriting process. Occasionally Tyler wanders off topic and offers personal insights on life. I noticed this bothered many of the other reviewers who wanted a linear, professional autobiography. Unlike those reviewers, I thoroughly enjoyed his meandering. For me, his writing style and (sometimes) lack of structure felt more personal. We're given a glimpse into the real Steven Tyler, the man behind the lead singer persona. He has packed a lot of living into his 60-plus years and has a lot to say. I found the book entertaining, sad, silly and poignant. Steven Tyler is far more intelligent than most people give him credit for. He's also over-the-top crazy at times. But isn't that what we love about him?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I’ve been listening to Aerosmith’s music since the ’70s, way back whenToys in the Attic was first released on vinyl. While I’m familiar with their music through the years, I knew little about the band and expected this to be an informative read for the casual fan. Sadly, I had a difficult time staying interested in this book. At times it could be witty, funny and engaging, but there were too few of those times.Steven Tyler relates his life story in a very stream of consciousness nature, almost rambling at times, skipping from topic to topic. There was way to much emphasis on drugs, sex, groupies and more drugs. I got the point the first few times he tells us that rock gods such as himself can have their pick of women and it’s easy to obtain all the drugs they desire. While he claims to love and respect women, it doesn’t show through in the tales he tells about life on the road with the band. The language used in this book was very explicit; definitely R rated. I don’t cringe at a few four letter words to add emphasis or meaning but in this case (I listened to the audio) it was excessive.I wondered if the emphasis on sex and drugs plus the constant explicit language added or subtracted from the book. Does it make it more honest because that is who he is? Toward the end of the book Steven does explain why he included so many of the drug episodes and the colorful language by saying, “I wouldn’t be who I am without the good, the bad and the ugly”. I agree; I wouldn’t want the book to be a sanitized version but a little less of the above and a little more about the band, the songs, his family, friends and perhaps some other anecdotes would have made this a better memoir for me.The book was narrated by Jeremy Davidson who did an excellent job of sounding like a rock and roller. Ya know, that rock star voice. I can’t describe it but I know it when I hear it. He was easy to listen to and contributed to my decision to keep listening even after I decided this was not my style of book.While this was not the book for me, I would recommend it to Aerosmith fans and the more avid rock fans, especially those that like an in-your-face, no-holes-barred rock memoir.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Was very interested in reading this....however I found it difficult to follow. Got 2/3 through (about 250 pages) and still hadnt really touched much upon the rehabs and fmaily life I was interested in learning more about. It seemed to be more about life on the road and drugs and relationships within the band than anything else. May pick it up in the future to finish it.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Steven Tyler: Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?" by none other. Filled with sex and rock 'n' roll. Not too far into this memoir, Steven recounts how he used to make love to this radio DJ he was dating while she was on the air and try to mess up her lines. Well, okay then.... I gave it a good try. Really. Read a 100 or so pages. My favorite part was when he was writing about the beauty of silence when he was a kid out in nature, and then he compared it to being on acid. Wait a minute! The writing is awful, filled with exclamation points (a bad habit I have and will now try to kick! oops!!) and CAPITALIZATIONS. I am not quite sure what his co-writer David Dalton contributed. I shudder to think Dalton toned it down and what it was like beforehand! (I know, but that really does need an "!".) Two Stars.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Steven Tyler’s “Does the Noise in My Head Bother You” was the drug-filled, curse-filled, rather incoherent rambling you might expect. I’ve liked Aerosmith since the 80s, and enjoyed the relatively few times in the book where he’d link a song’s lyrics to a story he just told. While the majority of the book is told in chronological order, he’ll take tangents that are sometimes hard to follow. Then the anecdote abruptly finishes and he’s back to going about wherever he left off from.I was rather surprised he skipped over the whole Run DMC version of “Walk This Way” as I believe it was the primary reason for the band’s renewed success. Had talked very little of “Permanent Vacation” or “Pump”—two of Aerosmith’s greatest “comeback” albums—and spent far more time on later releases, which weren’t up to par IMO.Tyler’s certainly talented and I enjoyed listening to the narrator read the book as he seemed to be having a ball reading it. But in terms of the flow and some of the content covered, it was disappointing. After several stories of going into rehab, falling off the wagon, going back into rehab, falling off the wagon again…well…it’s the “Same Old Song and Dance.”
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have to say I enoyed this book. I like Steven Tyler and his music but was not thrilled with some of the things I found out. I was amazed to see just how fragile his realtionship was with Joe Perry. This is a good read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5DOES THE NOISE IN MY HEAD BOTHER YOU?, written by Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame, along with David Dalton, is Mr. Tyler’s autobiography. As the frontman for one of the United States’ most influential rock bands of the last 30 years, Tyler has a lot to say, and it isn’t pretty.
Along with the overload of sex, drugs, and other rock’n’roll players, Tyler wants to make certain you understand that HE WAS STABBED IN THE BACK and CHEATED and HE ISN’T THE ONLY ONE IN THE BAND THAT USES DRUGS. Tyler sometimes alludes to certain people both in the band and out as having done him wrong without specifying exactly who did what. Other times he flat-out names names and tribulations.
If you grew up listening to Aerosmith and followed along with their infighting you will be somewhat familiar with this recounting of their years together. I did learn more about the behind-the-scenes than I knew before and more about his wives (but not enough!). I understand now how Tyler approaches music, the in-between places that are the magic, the amazement and awe that nature can contribute.
At times the writing sounds like in-your-face Steven, but occasionally it sounds like the co-writer had a heavy hand in the text. Rambling and non-linear, Steven likes rhyming words as he talks.
I was actually hesitant to read this book, as Steven Tyler has always been god-like to me and I didn’t want that bubble to be burst. Fully aware that it could easily be done, I read it anyway and now see that at least one of my worst fears was confirmed; He does think that women are on this planet just to be used for sex and to give him children. Still, I love him, because he’s a freaking genius. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Although I enjoyed some of their music I had not been an over-the-top Aerosmith fan. When I started this book I knew nothing about Steve Tyler, so everything in the book was a revelation. Mr. Tyler tells his story with apparent honesty, humour and sometimes sorrow. Most definitely a rock’n roll memoir as advertised. Mr. Tyler does not shy away from the difficult topics however, in my opinion; he was sometimes a little too forthcoming in personal details. Did I really need to read anatomical details in inches?
Not too long ago I read Keith Richard’s biography so I could not help but make comparisons. They are similar in many ways but each interesting in their own style. I felt this was definitely written in Mr. Tyler’s voice and overall, I enjoyed it. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I would not believe the words of this man ever. Drunk, strung out on drugs. He is a boozer, womanizer and creep. wasted my money on the trashy book.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I just could not stay focused on his story. i found many parts hard to comprehend, written in riddles/lyrics. I was lost more than not and just gave up. he is an interesting man and has a greats tory to tell it is just not my time to read it. I quit it after 1/3.
Book preview
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? - Steven Tyler
SEMIPROLOGUE
If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you’re a singer, everything looks like a song.
Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that makes you smile. We’re not quantified; there’s no chart of desire. When the roaring flames of your heart have burned down to embers, may you find that you have married your best friend. Hunch, conjecture, instinct . . . a blind allegiance to anything can get you killed, and always remember . . . sing as though no one can hear you; live as though heaven is here on Earth. Here I want to say something deep and meaningless, like
To thine own self be true," but in truth, the first thing we have to do is KILL ALL THE LAWYERS.
When I was a kid and in a gang, my so-called best friend, Dennis Dunn, would slam me in the arm and say, Pass it on, motherfucker!
So I turned to Ignacio and punched him in the arm and said, Pass it on!
Ignacio turned to Footie and punched him in the arm, and Footie punched Raymond, who in turn . . . punched me again. It’s all about fighting for position. Later on in life I was to find that being in a band was not too different. Only in my new gang, Brad punched Tom, Tom punched Joey, Joey punched Joe, and Joe punched me (in the mouth), and that’s the sweetest way I can tell you what happens in every band that ever there was (at least those that lasted more than ten years and got the chance to manifest the light).
I remember once my mother telling me, when I said I wanted to be like Janis Joplin: If you manifest the light, you will become a dartboard for others’ fears, doubts, and insecurities. And if you can handle that, Steven, my little skeezix, you may have your Blue Army.
And guess what? I got both barrels! I also wish to articulate at the outset here, neighbors and ne’er-do-wells, that my life’s journey has not taken me to a place to defile, demoralize, or damage anybody. . . . So all of you who have ruffled my feathers and done me wrong for being an inquisitive child or an oversensitive pain-in-the-neck artist, remember, just like they said about Mongo in the movie Blazing Saddles, if you shoot Steven, you’ll just make him angry.
When you’re young, you experience everything for the first time, and because it’s happening to you so matter-of-factly, it just is . . . and you argue your way through it. In midlife, you question fucking everything, and so much energy is wasted questioning the whys of it all. You want to find that angel of thunderstorms that will put out your internal fire. You start to believe that you made it through six decades because there is an angel on your shoulder.
That’s why I’m a songwriter—because I’ve lived through the changes of not knowing ANYTHING . . . to knowing EVERYTHING . . . and now at sixty-three I’m back to NOT KNOWIN’ NOTHIN’. And when your mind is free of so-called knowledge, it is now set free to use its imagination. Like Albert Einstein once said: Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Radio plays your song; the melody is so catchy that it crawls inside of the people listening and changes their Everything. They start singing it! You got into them. You made love to them. You got into their soul . . . and vice versa. It’s like Vuja Dé, and that’s when the miracle manifests . . . you’re trading faces, places, spaces, and graces.
Father of four children (loves of my life), a songwriter, got a doctorate at Berkeley and another one at UMass, Boston, a poet, a painter, a drug addict, and a person who learns something new on a daily basis, from the Malibu Home for the Recently All Right to having dinner with Sheikh Nion in Abu Dhabi . . . and now . . . an author? You gotta be kidding! RoMANtics. SeMANtics. Exotic, neurotic, you got it! Does the noise in my head bother you . . . yet? Yeah, really? I’d say we’re off to a good start.
S.T.
CHAPTER ONE
Peripheral
Visionary
I was born at the Polyclinic Hospital in the Bronx, March 26, 1948. As soon as I could travel my parents headed straight out of town to Sunapee, New Hampshire, to the little housekeeping cottages they rented out every summer, kind of an old-fashioned bed-and-breakfast deal only it was 1950. I was put in a crib at the side of the house. A fox came by and thought I was a cub, grabbed me by the scruff of my diaper, and dragged me into the woods. I grew up with the animals and the children of the woods. I heard so much in the silence of the pine tree forests that I knew later in life I would have to fill that void. The only thing my parents knew was that I was out there somewhere. They heard me cry in the forest one night, but when they came up to where I was, all they saw was a big hole in the ground, which they thought was the fox’s den. They dug and dug and dug, but all they found was the rabbit hole I’d fallen into—like Alice.
2.jpgTrow-Rico Lodge and the lawn I was mowing when Joe Perry drove up, summer of ’69. (Ernie Tallarico)
And like Alice I entered another dimension: the sixth dimension (the fifth dimension was already taken). Since then, I can go to that place anytime I want, because I know the secret of the children of the woods; there’s so much in silence when you know what you’re hearing—what dances between the psychoacoustics of any two notes and what reads between the lines is akin to the juxtaposition of what you see when you look in the mirror. My whole life has been dancing between these worlds: the GOAN ZONE, the Way-Out-o-Sphere and . . . the UNFORTUNATE STATE OF REALITY. In essence, I call myself a peripheral visionary. I hear what people don’t say and I see what’s invisible. At night, because our visual perception is made up of rods and cones, if you’re going down a dark path, the only way to really see the path is to look off and see it in your peripheral vision. But more on this as we progress, regress, and digress.
When I finally got pulled out of the rabbit hole, my parents brought me back to the third dimension. Like all parents they were concerned, but I was afraid to tell them that I have never felt more comfortable than being lost in that forest.
In Manhattan we lived at 124th Street and Broadway, not far from the Apollo Theater. Harlem, man. If the first three years of your life are the most informative, then surely I needed to hear that music, and I was inspired by the noise coming out of that theater. It had more soul than Saint Peter.
A few years ago I was back at the Apollo, and saw the park where my mom had pushed me in my carriage. My first visual memory is from THAT PARK: trees and clouds moving above my head as if I were floating above the earth. There I am, a two-year-old astral-projecting infant. At age four, I remember going to get a gallon of milk with two quarters, walking with my mom hand in hand through passages and corridors of the basement of our building and through tunnels into the adjoining building where the milk machine was. I thought I was . . . God knows where. I might as well have been on Mars. Ah, it was the mysterious world of childhood, where someone is always leading you by the hand through a dark passageway and into a brand-new world just waiting for the child’s overactive imagination to kick in.
My mother lit the fire that would keep me warm for the rest of my life. She read me parables, Aesop’s Fables, and Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. Children’s tales and nursery rhymes from the eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds: Hickory Dickory Dock,
Andrew Lang’s The Nursery Rhyme Book, Hans Christian Andersen, Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo. So great! Never mind the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg!
My mom would read me all these stories every night at bedtime. But one night when I was around six, she stopped.
Happy days—Mom and me and Crickett, my Toy Fox Terrier, 1954. (Ernie Tallarico)
You gotta learn how to read ’em yourself,
she said. Up until then I’d been reading along with her as she pointed to the words. We did this for months until she knew I kinda had the idea, then suddenly there’s no Mom looking over my shoulder. She just left the book by my bed and I became distraught. "Mom, I wanna hear the stories. Why won’t you read to me anymore?! I said. And then one night I thought to myself,
Uh-oh, now I gotta get smart." Naah. . . . I’ll just become a musician and write my own stories and myths . . . Aeromyths.
Mom used to tell me of a man she’d seen on the Steve Allen Show, in 1956 when I was eight. His name was Gypsy Boots. He was the original hippie, a guy who lived in a tree with hair down to his waist and who promoted health food and yoga. Gypsy was the protohippie. In the early thirties he had dropped out of high school, wandered to California with a bunch of other so-called vagabonds, lived off the land, slept in caves and trees, and bathed in waterfalls. I was totally seduced by that lifestyle. Boots’s message was this: As primitive as his world seemed, he wanted people to think that he would live forever. Hey, he almost did, dying just eleven days before his ninetieth birthday in 1994.
Next in my life came a bohemian composer named Eden Ahbez, who wrote a song called Nature Boy
(which my mom heard on a Nat King Cole record). He camped out below the first L in the Hollywood sign, studied Oriental mysticism, and, like Gypsy Boots, he lived on vegetables, fruits, and nuts. My mom sang that song to me before I went to sleep. I’ll never forget how it made me think that I was her nature boy.
The song tells the story of how one day an enchanted wandering Nature Boy—wise and shy, with a sad, glittering eye—crosses the path of the singer. They sit by the fire and talk of philosophers and knaves and cabbages and kings. As the boy gets up to leave he imparts the secret of life: To love and be loved is all we know and all we need to know. With that Nature Boy vanishes into the night as mysteriously as he had come.
Unfortunately the people who own the rights to Nature Boy
won’t let me publish the actual words to the song in this book (still, you can just Google them), but I promise it will be on my solo album come hell or high water.
Then there was Moondog. What a fantastic character, a blind musician who dressed up like a Viking with a helmet and horns and a spear to match. He hung out on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue. I saw and smelled him every morning on my way to school. Oddly enough, he lived up in the Bronx, apparently in the woods, back behind the apartment buildings I grew up in. Was that a coincidence or was that God secretly telling me, Steven, thou shalt become the Moondog of your generation
? Or at least the leader of a rock ’n’ roll band.
What I heard about Moondog was that he wrote Nature Boy,
but what do I know? Maybe Eden Ahbez is Moondog spelled backward. . . .
My mother’s birth name was Susan Rey Blancha. At sixteen she joined the WACs (Women’s Army Corps). She met my dad while they were both at Fort Dix in New Jersey during World War II. One night he had a date with a woman who was rooming with my mom. The roommate stood him up, and instead he was greeted by my mother, who happened to be playing the piano at the time. My dad walked over to her and said, You’re playin’ it wrong.
It was love at first fight! They got married and had lil ol’ Lynda, my sister, and lil ol’ me came two years later. Ha-ha! That’s my mom, that’s my dad, and that’s why I’m so fuckin’ detail-oriented—and such a maniac. I got the traits that I don’t want and the ones I do. Because you’re an offspring, you pick up those traits unconsciously, in case you haven’t noticed. You become your mom!
My mother, Susan Rey Blancha, at eighteen in 1932. (Ernie Tallarico)
So that’s how I happened, 1948, a rare mixture of classical Juilliard boy meets country pinup girl, who, by the way, looked like a cross between Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich with a tinge of Elly May Clampett. And if God’s in the details—and we know She is—then I’m the perfect combination. I’m the N in my parents’ DNA. So now, if anyone’s mad at me and calls me a dick, I know they really mean Fort Dix. My daughter Chelsea always thought God was a woman from the day she was born. It was so nurturing hearing that from a child, that God would have to be a woman, that I just never questioned it. (No wonder I keep watching Oprah.)
054.jpgChelsea Anna Tyler Tallarico on our rope swing, Sunapee, New Hampshire, 2008. (Steven Tallarico)
Mom was a free spirit, a hippie before her time. She loved folktales and fairy tales but hated Star Trek. She used to say, Why are you watching that? All the stories are from the Bible . . . just six ways from Sunday. Get the Bible!
And I thought, Oh, boy, that’s just what I wanna do after I’ve rolled a doobie and I’m smokin’ it with Spock.
And by the way, that’s why teenagers today go, Whatever!
But you know—and I can only admit this in the cocktail hours of my life—SHE WAS RIGHT!!!!! Isaac Asimov’s I Robot, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, that’s where they got their inspiration. In the same way that Elvis got his sound from Sister Rosetta Tharpe (I dare you to YouTube her right now), Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, and Roy Orbison. And they, in turn, begat the Beatles and they begat the Stones and they begat Elton John, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, and . . . Aerosmith. So study your rock history, son. That be the Bible of the Blues.
I was three when we moved to the Bronx, to an apartment building at 5610 Netherland Avenue, around the corner from where the comic book characters Archie and Veronica supposedly lived (I guess that makes me Jughead). We lived there till I was nine—on the top floor, and the view was spectacular. I would sneak out the window onto the fire escape on hot summer nights and pretend I was Spider-Man. The living room was a magical space. It was literally eight feet by twelve! There was a TV in the corner that was dwarfed by Dad’s Steinway grand piano. There’s my dad sitting at the piano, practicing three hours every day, and me building my imaginary world under his piano.
7.jpgMe and Dad, 1958. It did snow more back then. (Ernie Tallarico)
It was a musical labyrinth where even a three-year-old child could be whisked away into the land of psychoacoustics, where beings such as myself could get lost dancing between the notes. I lived under that piano, and to this day I still love getting lost under the cosmic hood of all things. Getting into it. Beyond examining the nanos, I want to know about what lives in the fifth within a triad . . . as opposed to DRINKING a fifth! I’ve certainly got the psycho part . . . now if I could only get the acoustic part down (although I did write a little ditty called Season of Wither
).
And that’s where I grew up, under the piano, listening and living in between the notes of Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Debussy. That’s where I got that Dream On
chordage. Dad went to Juilliard and ended up playing at Carnegie Hall; when I asked him, How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
he said, like an Italian Groucho, Practice, my son, practice.
The piano was his mistress. Every key on that piano had its own personal and emotional resonance for him. He didn’t play by rote. God, every note was like a first kiss, and he read music like it was written for him.
I remember crawling up underneath the piano and running my fingers on top of the soundboards and feeling around. It was a little dusty, and as I was looking up, dust spilled down and hit me in the eyes—dust from a hundred years ago . . . ancient piano dust. It fell in my eyes and I thought, Wow! Beethoven dust—the very stuff he breathed.
It was a full-blown Steinway grand piano, not a little upright in the corner—a big shiny black whale with black and white teeth that swims at the bottom of my mind and from a great depth hums strange tunes that come from I know not where. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea had nothing on me.
Later on, I went back to visit 5610 Netherland Avenue. I knocked on the door of apartment 6G, my old apartment. It had been years, and the man who answered was drunk and in his underwear and undershirt.
Dad?
I asked. He cocked his head like Nipper, the RCA dog.
Hi, I’m—
I started to say.
"Oh, I know who you are, said he.
From the TV. . . . What are you doin’ here?"
I used to live here,
I said.
Well raise my rent!
said he.
So I went in and looked around, and doesn’t it always seem that the apartments we all grew up in are so much smaller compared to how they felt thirty years ago? My god, the kitchen was tiny, four by six! The bedroom I grew up in with my sister, Lynda, and my parents’ master bedroom facing the courtyard—you couldn’t have changed your mind in there, never mind your clothes. How the hell did my father get a Steinway grand into that living room? So weird seeing this very tiny apartment with an even smaller black-and-white-screen TV on which I’d watched in wide-eyed abandon shows like The Mickey Mouse Club and The Wonderful World of Disney, which premiered on October 27, 1954. So between growing up at three underneath a piano and seeing my black-and-white television world turn into color by the age of six, that was enough right there to prepare me for life. I couldn’t wait to jump into the middle of it.
4.jpgMy father, Victor Tallarico, 1956. (Ernie Tallarico)
My dad played those sonatas with so much emotion it vibrated into my very bones. When you hear that music from beginning to end day after day, it becomes embedded in your psyche. Those notes vibrate in your ears and brain. So for the rest of your life your emotions can be easily subliminally tapped into by music.
Most humans who are panning for gold—looking for that ecstatic moment—first find it in their own sexuality; then they have an orgasm and whoops, it’s over. Now, imagine someone exploring, perhaps in search of their destiny. He stumbles upon a cave and out of sheer curiosity crawls inside and then looks up—it’s all glittering and sparkling, and for that first moment I was in Superman’s North Pole crystal palace cave and the crystals resonated with Mother Earth’s birthing cries.
I didn’t know what I was hearing, and didn’t understand then where it all came from. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be a part of that. Little did I know, I was. It was pure magic. My dad manifested those crystal moments playing the notes of those sacred sonatas. It was like a mixture of Yma Sumac and the songs of humpback whales—these godlike sounds came showering down on me.
16.jpgDad at the Cardinal Spellman High School graduation in the Bronx, 1965. (Ernie Tallarico)
Just recently my dad came over to the house—he’s ninety-three now! And I sat down next to him at the piano and he played Debussy’s Clair de Lune. It was so much deeper than anything I have ever done or ever will do. It was so deep and invoked so much of that early emotion laid on top of my adult emotions that I wept like a baby. I remember that when I first heard it as a child I almost stopped breathing. Sometimes you can’t appreciate how fortunate you are until you look back and get to glance into the what-it-is-ness and see how it all reflects off from whence you came. I started there, so now I’m here. I guess we’re all here . . . ’cause we’re not all there.
Sunapee, New Hampshire, was where I spent my summers as a kid. Driving up to Sunapee we’d go past Bellows Falls and Mom would say, Bellows Falls? Fellow’s Balls!
There was so much to my mother. Like the way she’d get me to eat my peas. "Whatever you do, do not eat those!" And I gave her a frog smile.
A few years later, say around 1961, when I’d call for my mother from the other side of the house, my mom would go, "Yo! Where are you? Where’d you go?" Now I wonder where she’s gone. She was a beautiful Philadelphia Darby Creek country girl who came to the city to bring us up, let me have long hair in school, argued with the principals, drove us to our first club dates, and loved and nurtured me—the whoever I was and/or wanted to be.
In the fifties, it would take us seven hours to go from New York up to New Hampshire because in those days it was all on back roads (there were no highways). But the ride up to Sunapee was filled with fantastic roadside attractions. A giant stone Tyrannosaurus rex on the side of the road, wooden bears, Abdul’s Big Boy, and the Doughnut Dip, with a huge concrete doughnut outside.
Trow-Rico, our summer resort in New Hampshire, was named after Trow Hill, a local landmark, and Tallarico, my father’s name, just smushed together. The cottages were on 360 acres of nothing but woods and fields. It was my grandfather Giovanni Tallarico’s dream when he came over from Italy in 1921 with four other brothers. Pasquale was the youngest, a child prodigy on the piano. Giovanni and Francesco played mandolins. Michael played guitar. They were a touring band in the 1920s—it’s where I get my on-the-road DNA. I’ve seen brochures for the Tallarico Brothers—they performed in giant hotels with huge ballrooms in places like Connecticut and Detroit. They went from New York by train to these hotels all over the country and played their type of music, to their type of people. Sound familiar?
9.jpgWhere it all began . . . or, why I must love to tour.
My mother’s father—that was another story. He got out of Ukraine by the skin of his teeth. The family owned a horse-breeding ranch. The Germans invaded and machine-gunned the family down in front of my grandfather. Everyone out of the house!
Bb-r-r-r-r-a-t! They gunned down his mother, father, and sister. He got away by jumping down a well and managed to grab the last steamer to America.
Trow-Rico is where I spent every summer of my life until I was nineteen. On Sundays my family would throw a picnic for the guests. My uncle Ernie would cook steaks and lobsters on the grill, and we’d make potato salad from scratch. We served all the guests—which came to what? eight families, some twenty-odd people—in our heyday. After dinner, while the sun was going down, we’d fill in the trailer with hay, attach it to the back of a ’49 Willys Jeep, and take everybody on a ride all over the property. We also had a common dining room where we served them breakfast and dinner, and guests would do lunch on their own, all for, like, thirty dollars a week. Sometimes six dollars a night. And when the people left, my whole family got pots and pans out of the kitchen and banged them all together—behold the origin of your first be-in!
11.jpgSummer of 1954 at Trow-Rico. I’m at the top on the left, Lynda is in the straw hat, and Sylvia Fortune, my first girlfriend, is on the right with her legs crossed. I was infatuated with her. . . . (Ernie Tallarico)
As soon as I was old enough, they put me to work. First it was clipping hedges. When I snapped back, What do I have to do that for?
my uncle said, Just make it nice and shut up.
He used to call me Skeezix. He’d spent most of World War II in the Fiji Islands, so he knew how to take care of business and anything else that gave us any trouble. I helped him dig ditches and put in a water pipeline over a mile of mountain and dug a pond with my bare hands. I washed pots and dishes at night and mowed the lawns with my father when I was old enough to push a mower. I cleaned toilets, made the beds, and picked up all the cigarette butts that the guests left behind.
We would rake up the hay with pitchforks and put it in the barn below the lower forty. The downstairs of the barn was empty except for maple syrup buckets and wooden and metal taps for the trees that some family had left before we lived there. It was quite an adventure going down there—full of spiderwebs, stacks of buckets, glass jars, and artifacts from the twenties and thirties—all those dusty, rusty things kids love to get into—me in particular.
Upstairs in the barn, there was a hayloft door with an opening where you’d load the hay in and out. I could climb up there and jump down from the rafters of the ceiling. I did my first backflip in that barn, because the hay was so soft, it was like landing on, well, hay. I always kept an eye out for pitchforks left behind. Land on one of those suckers and I would have learned how to scream the way I do now . . . twenty years earlier.
Before I could go to the beach with the rest of the guests I had to finish doing my chores. After a while I came up with a plan. It was called: get up earlier.
Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday during the summer my father played the piano at Soo Nipi Lodge along with my uncle Ernie on sax. They had a trumpet player named Charlie Gauss, a stand-up bass player named Stuffy Gregory, and a drummer who will go unnamed. Soo Nipi Lodge—which today would probably be called Snoop Dog Lodge—was one of the classic old hotels, like the one in The Shining: all wooden and splendiferous and huge, with dining rooms and decks outside with rocking chairs and screened-in porches. Chill central by today’s standards. They began building these resorts in the 1870s, when horses and buggies brought the guests from the train station to the hotels. The only thing missing was the musicians to play music and entertain the guests—and this is probably how the Tallarico brothers came to buy the land there.
During Prohibition, people would take the train up from New York to Sunapee, and the booze would come down from Canada. Some folks drank, some didn’t. Maybe they came up for the weekend to see the leaves turn, but I have a funny feeling they got on the train for a quick weekend away—take horse-and-buggy rides, stay at the big hotels, and cruise in the old steamboats. The ones in Sunapee Harbor today are replicas of the original ones from a hundred years ago. Very quaint. Ten miles up the road was New London, the original Peyton Place, where, oddly enough, Tom Hamilton was born. But then again, it all makes perfect sense to me now.
On Sunday nights, Dad would give recitals at Trow-Rico. People from miles around would come over to hear him, and my grandma, my mother, and my sister would play duets. All the families that came up had kids, and Aunt Phyllis would holler, C’mon, Steven, let’s put on a show for them!
Downstairs from the piano room was the barn’s playroom: Ping-Pong, a jukebox, a bar, and, of course, a dartboard. There was also a big curtain across one corner of the room that made a stage where my aunt Phyllis taught all the kids camp songs like John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
and the Hole in the Bucket
song. I would pantomime to an old 78 recording of Animal Crackers.
It was an evening of camp-style vaudeville. For the finale, we hung a white sheet in front of a table made from two sawhorses and a board. Someone from the audience would be brought back to lie on the board, and behind them a giant lamp cast shadows on the sheet. My uncle Ernie would perform an operation on the person lying down, pretending to saw him in half and eventually pull out a baby—quite horrifying and hilarious to the audience. It was all very tongue-in-cheek but certainly the beginning of my career.
We must have done a hundred and fifty or more of those shows over the years. I was a serious ham. I’d do cute things kids can get away with—especially to adoring relatives. It was like something from a Mickey Rooney movie. I’d learned all the lyrics to that song Kemo-Kimo.
Keemo kyemo stare o stare
Ma hye, ma ho, ma rumo sticka pumpanickle
Soup bang, nip cat, polly mitcha cameo
I love you
And then I’d add something like Sticky sticky Stambo no so Rambo, had a bit a basket, tama ranna nu-no.
What the hell was that? The beginning of my love for real out-there music and crazy lyrics.
Before I got involved in doing chores at Trow-Rico, before I discovered girls and pot and playing in bands, I had a great life in the woods with my slingshot and BB gun. As soon as we got up there, I’d be gone in the woods and fields. And I never came back till dinnertime. I was a mountain boy, barefoot and wild. I walked through the woods, looked up at the trees, the birds, the squirrels—it was my own private paradise. I’d tie a stick to a rope and make a swing from any tree branch. I was brought up that way, a wild child of the woods and ponds. But of course, nobody believes that about me. They don’t know what to think when I say, You know, I’m just a country boy.
1961—we all gotta start somewhere. . . . (Ernie Tallarico)
No waves, no wind. If you go into a recording studio that’s soundproofed, something just feels wrong to your ears. Especially when they close the door—that’s sound deprivation, it’s anechoic, without echo, without sound. Not so in the woods. In that silence I heard something else there, too.
I lost all that mystery when I was on drugs. Coming out of that din I was able to feel my spiritual connection to the woods again. Drugs will steal you like a crook. Spirituality, over. I could no longer see the things I used to see in my peripheral vision. No periphery, no visions.
I used to go up in the woods and sit by myself and hear the wind blow. As a kid, I’d come across places where the woodland creatures lived. Tiny human creatures. I’d see mossy beds, cushions of pine needle, nooks and crannies under the roots of upturned trees, hollow logs. I’d look around for elves, because how could it be that beautiful and strange and nobody live there! All of this tweaked my imagination into such a state that I knew there was something there besides me. If you could sleep on moss that thick it would be bliss. I’d smell that green grass. I would see a natural little grotto in the woods and say to myself, That’s where their house must be.
A few years ago I found a moss bed for sale at this lady’s little store in New London. The place was full of nature stuff—and had a big wooden arch in front and giant bird wings. The bed is made of twigs, with a moss mattress, grouse feathers for pillows, a wooden nest, an ostrich egg cracked in half with a little message on it, and the prints of the fairies that were born on the bed. We kept it in the house so my two children, Chelsea and Taj, would see it and just know that fairies were born on that bed. They’d say, For real?
and I’d say, For real.
I bought the two fields I used to go walking in. I haven’t gone out into the woods lately to see if they’ve been touched; I’m afraid to find out if it’s all still there as I remember it. But I grew up with these creatures. I was alone in the forest but I was never lonely. That’s where my first experiences of otherness came from, of the other world. My spiritual ideas didn’t come from the Lord’s Prayer or church or pictures in the Bible, they came from the stillness. The silence was so different from anything I would ever experience. The only noise that you heard in a pine tree forest was the gentle whistling sound of the wind blowing through the needles. Other than that, it’s just quiet . . . like after a fresh snow. . . . It really quiets down in the woods . . . cracking branches . . . nothing. It’s like when I took acid—I felt the wind brushing against my face although I knew I was in the bathroom and the door was closed. This was Mother Nature talking to me.
I would walk through the woods and walk and walk. I would find chestnut trees, fairy rings of mushrooms, bird’s nests made with human hair and fishing line. I would imagine I was in the jungle in Africa and climb up on the gates at the entrances to the big estates and sit on the stone lions (until someone shouted, Get down from there, kid!
).
That’s where my spirit was born. Of course I got introduced to spirituality through religion, too, from the Presbyterian Church in the Bronx and my choir teacher, Miss Ruth Lonshey. At the age of six, I learned all the hymns (and a few hers). I fell in love with two girls on either side of me in the choir. And of course they had to be twins. I remember being five and sitting next to my mother in a pew at that church, looking up at the altar that held the Bible and a beautiful golden chalice, with the minister looming over it. There was a golden tapestry that hung down to the floor with a crucifix embroidered on the front. I was all wrapped up in the tradition of getting up, sitting down, getting up, singing, sitting down, praying, singing, praying, getting up, praying, singing, and hoping all this would take me somewhere closer to heaven. I thought for sure God must be RIGHT THERE under THAT altar. Just as I’d thrown a blanket over the dining room chairs to create a fortress, a safe, powerful place, kinda churchlike, with the added bonus of imagination. WOW, all of this combined together in one beautiful moment of ME, feeling GOD. But then I’d met Her once before in the forest.
I would walk in Sunapee with a slingshot in my back pocket over the meadow and through the woods until I got lost . . . and that’s when my adventure would begin. I would come upon giant trees so full of chestnuts that the branches would bend, bushes full of wild blackberries, raspberries, and chokecherries, acres of open fields full of wild strawberries in the grass—so much so that when I was mowing the lawn, it smelled like my mom’s homemade jam. I would find animal footprints, hawk feathers, fireflies, and mushrooms in the shape of Hobbit houses that I was told were left by Frodo and Arwin from Lord of the Rings. Incidentally, those were the same mushrooms that I would later eat and that would magically force my pen to write the lyrics to songs like Sweet Emotion.
In choir, I was singing to God, but on mushrooms, God was singing to me.
I pretended I was a Lakota Indian with a bow and arrow—One shot, one kill
—only I had my BB gun—One BB, one bird.
Me and my imaginary buddy Chingachogook, moving silently through the woods. I was a deadeye shot; I’d come back after an afternoon of killing with my slingshot and Red Ryder BB gun with a string of blue jays tied to my belt. That part wasn’t imaginary. I had watched every spring how blue jays raided the nests of other birds and flew away with their babies. My uncle had told me that blue jays were carnivorous, just like hawks and lawyers.
I’d go out fishing with my dad on Lake Sunapee in a fourteen-foot, made-in-the-forties, very antique, giant wooden 270-pound rowboat that only a Viking could lift. The handles on the oars alone were thicker than Shaq at a urinal. You’re out in the center of the lake, sun beating down like in the Sahara. You’re burning, you can’t go any farther. By the time we rowed out to the middle, where the BIG ONES were biting, we all realized we had to row back. We being ME. A-ha-ha-ha! I became Popeye Tallarico. Mowing the lower forty acres once a week gave me the shoulders to row back to shore (and to carry the weight of the world).
Up in the woods from the lake there were great granite boulders pushed there by glaciers during the Ice Age. There were caves up above the road I lived on in Sunapee with Indian markings on the walls—pictographs and signs. They were discovered when the town was settled back in the 1850s. The Pennacook Indians lived in those very caves. After killing off all the Indians, the whites built and named a seventy-five-room grand hotel after them, Indian Cave Lodge, the first of three grand hotels in the Sunapee area and the first place where I played drums with my dad’s band back in 1964—also just a half a mile away from where I first saw Brad Whitford play.
In the town of Sunapee Harbor there used to be a roller-skating rink. It had been an old barn; they opened up the door on the right side and the door on the left side and they poured cement around the outside of the barn so you could skate around the barn and through the middle out the other side. As a kid, it was a great little roller-skating rink. And back then, you could rent skates on the inside of the barn along the back wall and buy a soda pop, which they would put in cups that you could grab as you skated on by. Later on they put a little stage where a band could play behind where they rented the skates. By the next summer, not only could you roller-skate, but you could also rock ’n’ roller-skate to your favorite band. It was the first of its kind and it was called the Barn. Across the street was a restaurant called the Anchorage. You could pull your boat up and after a long day of waterskiing, sunbathing, or fishing-with-no-luck, get fish and chips. . . . And speaking of chips, no one made french fries better than one of the cooks that worked at the Anchorage—Joe fucking Perry. I went back there to shake his hand and there he stood in all his glory, horn-rimmed black glasses with white tape in the middle holding them together. He looked like Buddy Holly in an apron. I said, Hi, how are ya?
or was it, How high are ya?
At the time I was with a band called the Chain Reaction—and little did I know that my future lay somewhere between the french fries and the tape that held his glasses together.
At the end of each summer I’d go back to the Bronx, which was a 180-degree culture shock. A return to the total city—tenements, sidewalks—from total country—where the deer and the antelope rock ’n’ roam. Haven’t met many people who experienced that degree of transition. Where we lived was the equivalent of the projects: sirens, horns, garbage trucks, concrete jungle—versus the country—rotted-out Old Town canoe bottoms