I should be dead or I should be in prison and that's, I mean, you know, if life were
fair I would be dead or I would be in prison while I was in the throes of my
heroin addiction. One overdose, I woke up in the hospital and it's like I just
woke up after a couple hours but it was nine days later I was in a coma and the
strange thing about this is that before I came out of the coma and I tell people
this but it was a little tiny red dot and I was dreaming of a little tiny red
dot and it was really dark red and it started to get larger and when it got
larger the red turned to a little lighter orange and it got larger and it
turned into pink and then it started to look like muscle tissue under a microscope
you could see the threads and everything in the muscle tissue and then the
circle got very large and then it was like like a flash of light and I'd come
up out of it and they told me that I'd been down for nine days. That was
something that stuck in my memory. It was pretty wild.
I don't even think one bit of my childhood was ever normal. Two parents, there were
alcoholic drug addict artists from New York that loved me more than anything I
mean they gave me anything I wanted they spoiled me shitless but and I mean it
was crazy it was it was wild but to me it was it was my family and it was home.
I got a patient I was 13 years old. I played with a guy who was close to a
singer, a singer pentagram. His name was Bobby Lively. About two months after that
Bobby asked me if I wanted to join pentagram.
Next thing I know it was opening up for Judas Priest and it was crazy. I mean it
was so surreal. I was like I had to go to high school the next day.
These guys needed a singer in a band called Obsessed and they wanted somebody
they said they wanted a mixture of Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison, and Ozzy Osbourne and I
came as close as I could to that.
I had this just idea of having a straightforward rock and roll band and we
didn't want to come across too seriously and we we started playing and we
started getting popular and we played little clubs and started packing them in
and they're regular at these little clubs and then I went on played lots of gigs
throughout DC and I went through several different versions because people
would bail out because I was becoming very hard to deal with not on stage or
anything but it was just my personal life. I was pretty much wrapped into my
own thing and I'd show up and I would always show up for shows. I couldn't tell
you what kind of condition I might show up in but I would show up to
rehearsals most of the time. It opened up for the Ramones several times. It opened up for
Ron Wood, Bo Diddley, Iggy Pop, CBS Records. We're serious about maybe signing
us and we were in New York and we had just done a showcase at the Cat Club up
there with a band called the Dan Reed Network and at the time I was
completely hooked on dope and I was sick and I couldn't find anything and I
totally unraveled and fell apart and I was so sick when I walked into the
offices of CBS Records they just looked at our managers and said get him some
help and come back and see us. Well let's just put it this way at the end of my
shtick I was like hanging out with amputees I was pretty much hanging out
in the graveyard because I was hanging out with people with missing limbs and
an oil dens and then like I mean I went into the deep parts I became friends with
people that were living in abandoned houses in southeast part of our city and
with no electricity and no water sitting in there doing a thing getting
high. It got to a point where I just didn't want to wake up. I ended up very
empty. It got to the end where family was dead and gone the place I grew up in
had been sold. I was in an apartment and my uncle was paying rent for as a
promise to my mother when she died just to watch out for her boy and I was in
this apartment and there was no dirty bloody laundry all over the apartment
no food blood stains on the ceiling and the walls and I was I was 112 pounds and
I was completely sick. I needed a shot of dope so bad but I didn't want to
shot it. I just did it was the last thing I wanted but I needed it.
I went into the bathroom. The bathroom I went many times before and looked in the
mirror and told myself I was looking all right as you've lost some weight looks
kind of cool. I looked in the bathroom mirror and at that time I was looking
back at this complete skeleton greasy yellow-toned skeleton of a person I
sunken in and it finally occurred to me that all my great ideas all my talent all
the things I did fucking completely put me in a fucked up place. Some people will
call that a humility to finally admit the truth that I've made a fucking mess
out of my life. Some people will call it God's grace and I guess in the real
world we would call it a moment of clarity. Over 15 years have gone by
without me playing with the factory and situations and opportunities came
before me in the last few years to where I could just start this all back up. It
doesn't happen that often. Playing music again is an incredible
sensation. I've always loved it. It got me high, it gave me a thrill even back
when I was doing it a long time ago. It's just that the feeling I get from it
now and I don't really am not trying so hard to be myself or be something that I
think I am. I'm just being myself and actually enjoying the hell out of it.
Last six years of my life there's been a total transformation. I was able to
experience being sitting there hopeless at one point thinking there was nothing
left to live for to actually come to a point and say there's always more to
live for and stuff keeps coming my way. I'm married, I have a wonderful wife, I
travel. The coolest thing is that the quality of people in my life now.
I mean I've already lost out on a lot but I've also gained a lot but
knowing is all the difference.
