Why and How did Rock n’ Roll Ruin my Life?

Due to the title of this illustrious blog I have received many enquiries as to why I called it that. So I will now attempt to explain. When I was a kid I believed that Gene Simmons was part demon. I thought that Jim Morrison had mystical qualities. I also believed that you could live your life by Rolling Stones lyrics. Well, at least I knew that Venom was mostly kidding.

I loved Kiss (and I have a photograph of myself by the X-mas tree, clutching Kiss’ “Alive II” on vinyl, of course, from when I was about 9 years old to prove it) but I’m pretty sure I didn’t exactly know what partying every day meant--though I am sure I understood the sentiment. At an extremely early age I knew I wanted to do my own thing and not be brought down by the man. When I was twelve years old one of my parents’ friends accused me of being a hedonist. This happened within days of my finishing reading “No One Here Gets Out Alive” (the biography of James Douglas Morrison, if you didn’t know) when I was in 7th grade. My father was right there and he did not disagree.

Therefore it is not too far fetched for me to tell you that I never conjured up a realistic vision of how to live my life according to any of the supposed reasonable expectations of so-called mainstream society. I remember being about 13 years old and listening to Exene from X singing “No one is united and all things are untied” and thinking, Yes, that is true. And When I heard the song from Black Flag telling me that, “Swimming in the mainstream is such a lame, lame dream” I was all, “Fuck yeah Henry, I could not agree more!”.

So you see, I never stood a chance and that’s why I can tell you that rock n’ roll ruined my life. I mean c’mon, I was about ten or eleven years old when my mom and dad first brought me to CBGB down on the Bowery here in New York City (if you go down there now CB’s is long gone and the whole area is VERY family friendly, but back then it was a different story). I couldn’t tell you the band’s name that was playing that night but I do remember that there were still movie theater seats in there and that the band I saw had a singer with a ginger afro and a skinny new wave tie over a blood red shirt under a black suit jacket.

It’s like I was born into this. Maybe If I had a choice I could have said, “I’ll take a mom and dad that are stock brokers and/or doctors, or possibly lawyers and yeah, I’ll have a profession for myself that’s going to get me rich too.” But you know what? Here I am on Staten Island, still playing guitar and punk rockin’ my way through life against my better judgment. A life ruined by rock n' roll.