It was hilarious. My seventy-year-old grandfather slept in this room that I had covered with pictures from teen magazines, mostly rock stars like Aerosmith, Boston, a lot of Kiss, Bay City Rollers, even Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. I dreamed of being a teen idol. Grandpa never complained about my decorating, and Big Lilly never complained about the noise. I would sleep on their sofa bed in the living room.
Grandpa would come home from the bakery at five in the morning and he’d have a shot of whiskey. I’d be drowsy but I’d always ask, “Hey, Grandpa, how are you?”
“Just fine. Just fine. Hey, Stevie, wanna snort?” He called a shot a “snort.”
I’d politely decline: “Nah, Grandpa.” He’d always offer me a shot, do one himself, then go in his room. He’d close the door and go to sleep. Snort.
MY FIRST CONCERT
In June ’78, I saw my first concert. My cousin Karen won tickets over the phone from the radio station 93 KHJ. She called me up and asked, “Stevie, how would you like to see Kiss at Magic Mountain?” My jaw dropped. She knew Kiss was my favorite band. I told her how much I’d love to go. The next day she picked me up, and we drove out to the amusement park. We were totally into it when we noticed there were camera crews setting up. They were filming Kiss for what would become their cult-classic film Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. I was a part of Kisstory!
That night I saw a lot and learned a lot about rock music. The most important thing I took away from the concert was an appreciation for how much the studio version of a song could take on a life of its own when it was performed live. It was the same song, same lyrics, same chord progression, but it was totally different, having a unique and often superior energy all its own.
When I returned home, there was no question. After the garage band experience and now seeing Kiss in all their glory, rock ’n’ roll was for me! I begged Big Lilly for a guitar. She surprisingly put up little fuss and within a week, I had a Sears department store guitar and amp combo. Unfortunately, I didn’t spend much free time practicing my new guitar.
Now that I was back in Hollywood, Big Lilly insisted I enroll at Bancroft Junior High. After classes, I would join all the local teenagers and ride bikes and skateboards at Laurel Elementary School, where they had all these cool ramps and dips and big embankments that the riders would race off.
One day I skateboarded up this ramp, taking off at a pretty good speed. While in the air, I attempted a 180 and messed up big-time. My head slammed down against the pavement—skateboarding helmets were not even in existence back then—and it felt like a bomb went off in my head. I was in such pain, bordering on passing out. As these two kids were walking by, they saw me hit the ground. They ran over to see if I was okay. One of them asked, “Dude, are you all right?”
I remember half rolling up to face them, holding my head. “Yeah…”
“Well, let’s try to be a little more careful next time.” They kind of snickered as they walked off. I went home with a huge lump on my head. This is probably when all the brain damage started.
SLASH AND I MEET
Acouple of days later I was raising my own special brand of hell in class. My history teacher happened to have an apartment in the same building where I lived with Big Lilly. I tortured this poor woman relentlessly. See, I knew that she wouldn’t want to get my grandmother all upset by telling her bad stuff about me, so I would take full advantage of that situation and fuck with her all the time.
One day, I had her chasing me around the classroom. I was crazy, running around the desks and stuff. She chased me into an adjoining classroom and the teacher in that room was in some other kid’s face, pointing and shouting. “You’re a loser, a bum, that’s all you’re ever going to be!” I thought that was amusing. “Hey, another kid who gets teachers to lose it.” We looked at each other and just kind of smirked.
When the school day was over, we sought each other out. He said he recognized me from a few days earlier. I didn’t make the connection at first, but here was the kid who asked me if I was all right when I smashed my head.
His name was Saul Hudson. And from the first fart, we got along great. That very day we started hanging out, climbing to the third-floor railing on the south end of the school. We were about six inches apart from each other, standing on one foot singing “King Tut,” which was the happening Steve Martin song. We were laughing and having a good time until one of the teachers came out, yelling, “Jesus Christ, get the hell off there!” So we jumped and ran off. I think we bothered to show up at school for maybe another week after that, but then we started ditchin’ every day.
We had a routine. First, we’d go to school just in time for roll call in homeroom. After we were marked as present we would leave. Sometimes we’d come back for lunch. We would sit at a table with this cool kid who had a huge head of big blond curls.
His name was Michael Balzary, aka “Mike B the Flea,” aka “Flea.” He played trumpet for the school band and later went on to form the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Turns out, he lived down the street from me. Most evenings in the fall, Saul, me, and a big group of kids would play football on my grandma’s street. She would sit out on the front porch and take it all in. Most times, Flea would break out his trumpet and play for her. She thought he was a “little angel.”
SAUL WAS COOL
Saul was the coolest, smoothest guy. He had already been scoring with chicks and had a definite air of confidence about him. Saul had many talents. We’d go back to the schoolyard where we first met and ride bikes. He was awesome on a bike, the best BMX-er around, and would even enter in competitions. Me, I had a Huffy that I hated. They were a joke to kids who took their riding seriously.
Saul lived with his grandmother at Sweetzer and Santa Monica. I lived with my grandmother at Hayworth and Santa Monica, five blocks away. The first time he came over to my grandmother’s house, I showed him my guitar and little amp that my mom had bought me. I knew two chords and two scales.
Some kid had shown me those along with the main riffs of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” and Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down.” I loved Kiss, so I put Alive! on my record player, turned the volume all the way up, and started rocking out, doing my best Ace Frehley impersonation. He instantly fell in love with the blistering noise coming out of the amplifier.
That’s all it was really, just noise. That same week, I gave him the guitar to work with, and I decided to be a singer. I bought a mike stand and a cheap microphone. We would sit in his grandma’s stairwell, and he would play guitar and write lyrics.
Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had all these scarves on his microphone stand, so I got these bandannas at an army-navy store at Vine and Santa Monica and put them on mine. These little kids who lived next door to me thought I was Leif Garrett. I had hair just like him. When I would run into them outside, they’d ask me for my autograph. Sadly, it was a short career, because while I really tried to sing, I just couldn’t. I’d always sing to the radio and eventually I realized I wasn’t any good. I also came to the conclusion that guitars weren’t for me either. Drums gave me a primal thrill that a guitar could never touch. And I had been banging on Tupperware since I was two, so it was the drums for me.
I thought drums looked so cool. My first drum set was comprised of books stacked in position, and for my first drumsticks I used the bottom part of wooden hangers. Around the same time, Saul’s grandma bought him a better guitar than the one that I gave him.
Again we would sit in his grandma’s stairwell and jam for hours. Soon we became inseparable,