I really want to get to some stories and experiences I've had, and I'll do that soon, but I want to talk a little about something that's always been the love of my life. Music. I've always had a HUGE love affair with music. Music of all kinds. Growing up, music seemed to always be a big part my life. My grandmother was a huge big band fan, my uncle a big fan of the music of the 60's, and my mom of music of all kinds. It gave me quite an eclectic taste in music. I loved Gene Krupa, The Beatles, Janis Joplin etc. As a kid, I spent many weekends with my uncle, going to various places, and doing a lot of outdoor activities. Music was always a big topic of discussion between us. Sunday mornings with him would consist of breakfast at this deli in Glendale we loved, listening to Breakfast with The Beatles, telling each other what our favorite Beatles' songs were. He was a Philosophy major in college, so the discussions tended to be deeper than how a certain song was better than another etc. The Doors was a band we really dove into the lyrics of on that level. Jim Morrison seemed to speak to him in a language he could decipher on a deeper level.
My mother, on the rare times I would see her, always had the radio on. In her home, the car etc., and she liked to sing along when a song hit her the right way. She loves to remind me about her experiences at live shows, seeing bands on the Strip when they were club bands, going to Frisco in '67 when she was pregnant with me, seeing Hendrix, Joplin etc. I always wondered what she "did" while I was cooking in the oven, so to speak. I got many albums from her (I stole quite a few). My first two Sabbath albums, Paranoid,and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Those albums changed the way I looked at music at the age of 10 or so. Up to that point, my musical interests consisted of Kiss, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent, sprinkled with a little Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles. Sabbath opened my eyes to a larger world of music, taught me that it could be darker and more dangerous than my safe little 3 chord existence.
The very first album I ever bought was Kiss Alive, when I was seven. I remember seeing it on an end cap at Kmart, picking it up and being totally engrossed in the cover, these four guys in kabuki makeup and crazy costumes. It kinda scared the shit out of me, and I liked it. I liked the feeling of it being dangerous in a way, evil. That album set me on a life-long journey that I still love to this day. It made me want to play music, be the guy on the cover of an album. Never got that far, but I had a hell of a time trying! I wanted to be Peter Criss, a drummer, the engine that propels an unstoppable machine on the verge of going completely out of control! I had the posters, albums, pictures from magazines like Circus taped on my walls. Music was what I wanted to do, I just needed an instrument to get started.
I got my first "real" drum set when I was 11 or so. I had taken piano lessons before that, and hated it. My teacher was this old man who could barely keep himself awake long enough to pay attention to what I was playing. I wanted to quit every day, to play something else, anything but the piano. The guys on the posters in my room weren't sitting behind some POS piano, they had guitars, drums, and the world in the palms of their hands. I had an out of tune upright piano that I dreamed of lighting on fire. My grandfather wouldn't let me quit, telling me "if you learn the piano, you can play anything, any instrument, it all come from this!" I was a stubborn little kid, whodidn't think that old man knew shit about anything. After a while, I got my way and quit. Of course he was right, and looking back I really regret giving it up, because I actually took to it rather quickly. I guess I was meant to take a different path, but I always wonder what could have happened had I stuck with it.
To be continued...
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