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  I watched them clomp off in their untied work boots, looking for some other unsuspecting member of our troops to torture.

  Fucking burnouts, I thought as I headed to my next class, knowing that someday those losers would be fans of the band I was going to start. That’s what I was thinking as I sat down at my desk in history class. I didn’t let the burnouts get to me because at the ripe old age of fourteen I had had an epiphany. I was already on a path from which I would never stray. A path that instilled me with a fearlessness from the certainty of knowing what I was going to do with my life.

  I can identify the exact moment, the specific time and place when I had such a powerful life-changing experience that it would shape and focus the rest of my life. Yes, my life has been made up of a multitude of experiences whose cumulative effect make me into the man I am today. But the event that started it all, that put me on the path to begin with, that I could pinpoint was on December 14, 1977, at Madison Square Garden in New York City when I went to see Kiss. Everything crystallized. Like Bruce Banner getting hit with the gamma radiation that turned him into the Hulk, I was irradiated by Kiss on that fateful winter night and walked out of Madison Square Garden with an absolutely clear picture of what I was going to do with my life: I was going to be in a band.

  I WAS INDOCTRINATED into Kisstianity two years earlier in late 1975, the first time I heard “Rock and Roll All Nite” on the radio. It hooked me the first time I heard it, not even knowing what band was playing it, because the DJ never said the band’s name. I was constantly singing the song, it was on a loop in my brain, and I was begging my parents to take me to a record store to try to find out who sang that song. I had to have it.

  One night, not long after that, my brother and I were watching TV and I was flipping through all seven channels we had back then and saw these four guys in makeup and costumes with instruments. I paused, curious about how this band looked. They were just standing there making faces, and I thought they looked goofy. I was about to change the channel when the host said, “And now to play their hit song ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ here’s Kiss!” Holy crap! The song! Peter kicked into the drum intro, and I lost it. My brother and I were jumping around and singing along, not believing what we were seeing. They went from looking goofy to the best thing I had ever seen/heard in my life. I was an eleven-year-old aspiring guitar player and a super-nerd comic book collector, and Kiss embodied my two favorite things in the world together in a band. If the host had come back out after the performance and said they were actually superheroes playing guitars, I would’ve believed it, that’s how blown away I was. I had to have that song. I HAD TO. I was like a junkie looking for a fix. I planned to go straight to the record store after school the next day to find that song.

  School was interminable that day. It was an endless drone of incessantly boring information dulling my brain. Kiss was telling me I needed to party every day, and I was stuck in fun jail. The only thing that kept me from running screaming out of that building to the sanctuary of the record store was the constant conversation amongst those who had seen—all of us who had borne witness to the majesty of Kiss. We would not be silenced. No matter how many times a teacher would yell at us to stop our whispered conversations about our new heroes, we kept on, passing notes when we couldn’t speak of the pictures we had drawn from memory of their logo and talisman-like makeup. In the lunchroom, climbing on tables, playing air guitar, and singing the song out loud, lunch ladies screaming at us to get down, dull brown gravy dripping off the serving spoons they were waving at us. I’m sure these scenarios were playing out all across America that day as my generation had found its voice, and it was wearing seven-inch platform boots.

  Finally the bell rang to end the day, and bulky school books in hand, I ran out into the cold New York winter air. I ran past the bus stop where a line of people stood waiting for a bus to show up. Normally I would’ve been in that line, the warmth of a bus better than walking the almost mile home in the cold, but I couldn’t stand the thought of standing there waiting for even a minute when I could be moving toward my goal. So I ran. I ran through the cramp that was like a hot poker in my side to the shopping center where the record store was in my sight. I was sweating against the frigid air as I ran down a row of stores, weaving between people and catching annoyed looks from less anxious shoppers. The bells on the door of the record store rang noisily as I slammed through it, wild-eyed and out of breath, my jacket hanging off my shoulders and still clutching my books, stopping dead in my tracks in front of a rack filled with nothing but Kiss Alive! I stood there mesmerized. There it was, right in front of me, waiting for me to come get it, like it had always been there. I gently took one off the rack, caressing the plastic wrap with my fingers as I stared and stared and stared at the cover. The four of them in action, the makeup, the costumes, the lights, the smoke, the Kiss logo, the candelabra!

  It was the best album I had ever held in my life, and I hadn’t even heard it yet. I just knew.

  From somewhere far, far away I could hear the Bryan Ferry–T-shirt-wearing record-store guy asking me if I needed any help. I didn’t answer—I couldn’t. I just kept staring, turning the record over and looking at the back cover, the two guys holding up the Kiss banner and an arena full of people waiting for the band to appear. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to be in that arena. I was lost in a Kiss reverie when suddenly the album was being pulled from my hands and I came out of my trance: “Are you going to buy that? Your sweaty hands are going to ruin it.” It was the record-store guy, quite bothered by this nonresponsive, sweating, red-faced kid who had dropped his books all over the floor of the store. “Umm, sorry, yes, I want to buy it. How much is it?” I asked. This irked him even more, as there was a sticker on the plastic that clearly read, “ON SALE ONLY $5.99.” I had ignored the sticker while I was in my Kiss-coma. He wordlessly pointed at the sticker and handed the album back to me. He walked away, and I started staring again, about to fall back into the album cover when I had a terrible realization. $5.99.

  $5.99?

  I had seven dollars in my pocket, having saved up some allowance money to buy my father a birthday present. How was I going to buy the album if I only had enough money to get my father a birthday present? I had to have the album, and I had to get my father a birthday present. I was agonizing over this decision—what could I do? It was a Sophie’s Choice for an eleven-year-old. The record-store guy cleared his throat loudly, signaling it was time for me to shit or get off the pot. I was gripping the album tightly in my hands, looking for an answer in the grease-painted faces of my idols when a lightbulb turned on and I knew what I was going to do.

  I would buy the Kiss album and give it to my father for his birthday. Brilliant! I’d give him Kiss Alive! and he’d give it back to me. Yeah, I know: it was a selfish plan, but I was getting my dad a gift, and it’s the thought that counts, right?

  I brought the album up to the register, where record-store guy was sitting and reading Creem magazine (with Kiss on the cover). I paid for it and then annoyed him even more when I asked him to gift wrap it. He looked at me like I had stepped in dog shit and tracked it all over the store, so I pointed at the sign next to the register that read, “Free gift wrap with every purchase!” He hate-wrapped the album and wordlessly shoved it in a bag, his mood in no way affecting mine. I was very happy with myself, smiling like an idiot as I walked out of the store telling the guy to “Have a nice day!”

  I got home and put the album in my closet. I had to put it out of my sight, as it was taking every ounce of what little willpower an eleven-year-old possesses to not unwrap the vinyl and crank it. Like a rock-and-roll Tell-Tale Heart, the album called to me; my only reprieve from its kick-drum heartbeat was while I was at school. A few days before his birthday I dared to take the album out of the closet to make sure it was okay. It felt hot in my hands and was practically screaming at me to play it.

  My dad’s birthday finally arrived, and I was so excited abou
t the present I had bought for myself—I mean for my dad.

  I handed my dad the present. I stood there watching, practically licking my chops as he unwrapped it. He looked at the album, confused for a second, and then he smiled and said, “Hmm, Kiss Alive! How did you know I wanted this?” For a moment I thought he was serious and that he was going to keep the album. That wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that my parents were divorced and we didn’t live with my dad. I’d only have visitation rights with the album a few times a month! My dad noticed the look of panic on my face and, smiling at me, said, “Thank you for this. Why don’t you listen to it for a while and tell me how it is?” He handed the album back to me, and I ran to the stereo to put it on. I carefully took the record out of the sleeve, trying not to be distracted by the photo booklet that came with the album. I put the record on the turntable and with surgical precision, lowered the needle onto the record and was greeted by a monstrous voice yelling, “You wanted the best! You got the best! The hottest band in the world… Kiss!!!!!” and then the opening chords to “Deuce” mainlined themselves straight into my cerebral cortex and I was hooked.

  I became a Kiss fanatic. They were my religion, and I was a radical extremist. Every conversation I had was about Kiss, either preaching to the choir of my Kiss-minded friends or espousing their greatness to recruit new army members. Every inch of wall space in my room was covered with posters and pictures of Kiss meticulously cut out of rock magazines. I had every album, doubles of the albums that came with extra stuff like the photo booklet in Alive! and the stickers in Rock and Roll Over so I could keep one set in mint condition and put the other set on my walls or school notebook. I got the Kiss action figures (by Mego), and I had the lunchbox and the makeup sets and anything they could stencil their logo on.

  Over the next two years Kiss became my number-one priority. More important than the New York Yankees (although when the Yankees won the World Series in 1977 that took precedence for a moment—more on that later), comics (until Kiss put out their own comic), and skateboarding (we’d skateboard to Kiss blasting from a boombox). Kiss was everywhere and everything to me. I had it all, except for actually seeing them live. I would go to the record store at least once a week and ask record-store guy if he knew when Kiss was coming in concert and when tickets would be on sale. Back then the record store was where we’d go to buy tickets; it had a Ticketron machine. He’d tap a couple of keys on the computer-like machine and invariably respond with a very bored, “Nope” with an accompanying eye roll. Undeterred, I kept up with my weekly inquisition as school slogged on through the black-and-white New York City winter, the frigid days dragging one into another. The only thing that made it tolerable was the daily lunchroom Kiss Army meetings. We’d all bring our current Kiss-covered copies of Circus, Creem, Rock Scene, and Hit Parader and go through them with a fine-toothed comb looking for info on Kiss tour dates. Someone in our troop would always have some rumor of a show, some information disseminated by a radio DJ, and we’d wind ourselves up only to be disappointed by record-store guy tapping those Ticketron keys and muttering, “Nope.”

  Winter colored up into spring and then school’s out for summer and what a summer it was. Summer of 1977 in New York City was an eventful one, to say the least, with its two-day city-wide blackout in July and the capture of Son of Sam in August. On the personal front my brother Jason and I got to escape the heat of the city when we flew out to Los Angeles and stayed at our mother’s friend’s house in Laguna Beach for a few weeks. For two kids from Queens, Laguna Beach was literally paradise. Every day we’d have to make a really difficult decision about what we were going to do first: go to the beach or go to the skateboard park. It was the best summer of my life until our second-to-last day there when I broke my left arm skateboarding. Even with that unfortunate accident, it was still an incredible summer.

  When I got home and had the cast put on my arm my mood quickly changed. I couldn’t play any sports, especially skateboarding, and more importantly, I couldn’t play guitar. This really bummed me out, as playing along to Kiss records was one of my favorite things to do. Losing my ability to do that because of skateboarding put my priorities in order. Guitar first, everything else second. And then school started. My golden summer seemed like a distant dream as I dragged my one-armed ass back into the Groundhog Day everyday schedule of school. Not being able to play guitar was a huge deal for me: it was an outlet, a way for me to vent, and without it I was having a hard time. I still had Kiss records, and my comics and the Yankees were on the verge of going all the way that year—it was all just a bit dulled for me with my ability to play guitar taken away. It was going to be a long six weeks in a cast.

  Walking home from school on a dreary fall day when all the leaves had already turned from a blazing melee of color to the limp calm beige of death, I decided to stop into the record store to see if there were any new records out that would cheer me up. I walked in, and the door chimes caused record-store guy to look over to see who was coming in to annoy him. I really wasn’t in any mood to deal with his jerk Patti Smith–T-shirt-wearing attitude, so I decided not to ask him about Kiss. I was looking at Cheap Trick’s In Color record when record-store guy said, “Hey kid, c’mere.” I looked up from Rick Nielsen’s picture and record-store guy was waving me over. This was a new development in our usually one-sided relationship, so I walked over, curious to see what he had to show me. I got to the counter, and he waved me over behind the register to where the Ticketron machine was. Now I was really interested—I was behind the curtain. He punched a couple of keys and pointed to the screen for me to read:

  KISS DECEMBER 14 1977 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ON SALE SATURDAY KISS DECEMBER 15 1977 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ON SALE SATURDAY KISS DECEMBER 16 1977 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ON SALE SATURDAY

  I stood there holding my breath as I read it over and over calmly thinking it through step by step. It was Monday. Tickets would go on sale Saturday. I would be getting my allowance from my dad when he came to take me and my brother to see the Yankees play the Dodgers in the World Series Tuesday night (yeah, that little thing was happening as well—no big deal!). I would have enough money to buy tickets. I WOULD HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY TICKETS!!! My screaming inside voice was interrupted by my new hero, Record-Store Guy!, smiling at me and saying, “The one day you didn’t ask about Kiss tickets, and there they are.” I was freaking out. Kiss was coming to Madison Square Garden, and I could buy a ticket! I had to get home and call my friends. “What time do they go on sale?” I asked as I was running out the door, and he said, “Hold on, there’s something else—be right back.” He walked to the back of the store and into the back room where they kept the stock. I was so antsy to get out of there that I was practically hopping from foot to foot ready to bolt so I could get home and call everyone and tell them not to spend any money because they’d need it for Kiss tickets, and then he walked out of the back room holding a poster. He handed it to me, and I unrolled it and screamed, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”

  “It’s yours, kid. Take it. They sent us a bunch. Now get out of here. You look like you’re going to pee your pants,” laughed Record-Store Guy! I was still hopping back and forth. My brain had exploded upon seeing the poster, and for a few seconds all I can remember were the sounds of crazed voices screaming, lunatic ravings in my head that sounded like the cat lady on The Simpsons crossed with the Tasmanian Devil, and then my brain slowly pieced itself back together and I realized it was just me standing there freaking the fuck out from a Kiss overdose. A concert and a new album? It was too much to bear. I checked to see if I had peed my pants because I thought Record-Store Guy! had said I did. Relieved that I had just misheard him, I calmed myself down as best I could, wiped the drool from my chin, and asked him again what time tickets went on sale. “Ten o’clock on the dot man. Don’t be late.”

  I wasn’t going to be late.

  I got home and hung my new poster in my room. I told Jason about the concert, and he had money f
or a ticket. One less thing to worry about. Then I called my friends and told them about the concert and the new Kiss album. Everyone was as excited as I was; there was a lot of screaming down the phone lines. Now I just needed to convince my mom that it was okay for me and my brother to go without parental supervision—this was going to be just the guys. I started coming up with plans B, C, D, etc., etc., in case she said no. I made sure all my chores were done, and when she got home from work that evening I brought it up straight away. I told her that Kiss tickets were going on sale and that we had money to buy them (she knew how bad we wanted to see them) and that we were going to go with my friends. No chaperones. She was totally cool with it. “You’re going to be fourteen. It’s okay with me if you take the train in with your friends. Make sure it’s okay with your father, and don’t let your brother out of your sight. And you come home straight after the concert, okay? It’s a school night.” Shocked that that conversation went so easily, I thanked and hugged and kissed her and ran to my room to listen to Alive! I put on my headphones, laid down on my bed, stared at my new poster, and imagined being in the audience as the record massaged my brain through the Sennheisers.

  I woke up the next morning in full-on Kiss Army mission-planning mode. It was Tuesday. First piece of business was seeing our dad that night and asking him for permission. Second was going straight to the record store after school on Friday to buy Kiss Alive II. I’d have enough money with what I had left from my previous two weeks’ allowance and that current week’s allowance to buy the record and a ticket. There was no way I could wait for Saturday morning knowing the new record was already in the store. And what if it sold out? Some of my friends were going with me to do that on Friday. Third, we made plans to meet Saturday morning at 7 a.m. at the record store so we’d be first in line. Fourth, we checked out the Long Island railroad schedules for December. Everything was coming together.