I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax Read online

  I knew I wouldn’t necessarily be spitting blood and blowing fire and wearing makeup, but I wanted to do what those guys were doing. I wanted to write and play music I loved, be onstage, rock out on guitar, and have thousands of people cheering. It just seemed like the greatest job in the world. I was fourteen that month, December 31, and I already knew, for sure, what I was gonna be when I grew up.

  I started spending a lot of time in Manhattan after that. It only took fifteen or twenty minutes to get into the city on the subway, so after school I’d escape to Greenwich Village. For a fourteen-year-old kid into rock and roll, the Village was like Disneyland. I was out of the grip of Queens; the chains were broken and nothing was holding me back. I knew that when I got a band together that was worth anything, we’d go to Manhattan. I was already looking forward to being part of that bigger, better world. It seemed like I was on a mission and I was on the right path, hanging out at record stores and guitar shops. I was going to get out and travel around the world. I used to think about that all the time.

  There was a big disco scene in the seventies in New York, with places like Studio 54, which I was way too young and uncool to get into, but the music was everywhere. Chic, the Village People, and Donna Summer were on the radio all the time and the streets were lined with disco trendies. In reaction to the craze, a lot of longhairs and rockers launched this “Disco Sucks” movement. They had T-shirts and signs. It was almost like a political campaign. I jumped on the bandwagon because the people I hung out with hated disco. I even had a Disco Sucks shirt. But I secretly loved disco. Nile Rodgers, who fronted Chic and produced some of the greatest disco songs of all time—like Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” and Chic’s “Le Freak”—was an amazing guitarist. And the Village People were huge, theatrical pop stars.

  I fucking loved most of that music. The grooves were great, the guitar lines were funky and immediate, and the beats made you want to shake your ass—but I drew the line at the “YMCA” thing. I loved disco; I fuckin’ hated dancing. The idea of doing the boogie all night long was about as appealing to me as a root canal. I was way too self-conscious to enjoy dancing, which is one of the reasons I was a closet disco fan. But I was always open-minded about music. My criterion was simple. Either I liked it or I didn’t, and just because I didn’t like one thing didn’t mean I wouldn’t try listening to something else from that same band or genre. I was open to anything.

  I was also opinionated as fuck. If I didn’t agree with someone, especially when it came to music, I’d let them know. The funny thing is I was a quiet and introspective kid overall. I lived in my head most of the time, thinking of the future. I knew that if I wanted to play guitar and be onstage I’d have to be extroverted and fearless. So I weaned myself into that mind-set. From the start, I was willing to struggle and be uncomfortable, do whatever it would take to be up on that stage with those lights shining down on me. There’s no room in that world for fear.

  I’d think about rocking out in front of crowds every day, almost every hour—even more than I’d think about girls. None of the girls I knew were into rock and roll anyway, so it wasn’t like I was missing out on any chicks. Girls came back into my life when I went back to sleep-away camp at age fourteen. (Today, as the parent of a little boy, I’m already filling out the camp application for when he’s thirteen—have at it, Revel.)

  In 1978, when I was fourteen and a half, I went to an overnight camp in New Jersey filled with cute, horny girls. They were getting their first taste of freedom, and they could do whatever they wanted. Did I mention they were horny? All these chicks wanted to do was fool around, even more so than the girls at Camp Cayuga. Only, the same basic rule applied—no fucking. I was okay with that since no one had touched my dick besides me since the last time I was at summer camp. Again, I did everything with these girls but have sex, and I did it a lot more than I had two years earlier. Plus, I sorta knew what was going on this time, so it wasn’t awkward, but it was just as exciting.

  Summers in New York were pretty great because I didn’t have any homework, so I had no reason to be home. Then I started seventh grade at IS 25 in Queens and after school I wanted to stay out with my friends until late at night. I was hanging with some older kids, and it was normal for them to be out until 11 p.m. on school nights. On weekends there was no curfew. We went to the baseball field or the park down the street or someone else’s apartment to listen to records and drink. Sometimes we went into the city. I wasn’t out of control. I never did anything too stupid. But that didn’t matter to my mom. Suddenly, since I was back in school, she decided I needed a 9 p.m. curfew.

  I said, “Fuck this shit.” There were parties going on and chicks to try to score with. I said, “I’m not a fuckin’ baby. I’m not coming home at 9 o’clock.”

  So I would get home whenever, and my mom would scream at me. I’d talk to her for a minute and then go to bed. It was always the same thing: “I don’t understand why I have to be home so early. All my friends . . .”

  “I don’t care what your friends are doing,” she’d scream loud enough to wake my brother. “This is my fucking house and my fucking rules!”

  Apparently, swearing was okay, but staying out late was forbidden. I told her I had people to hang out with and a life to live, and I wasn’t going to have a curfew. She grabbed me by the arm and said, “You’re coming to see Dr. Rice. You’re fucked up. I fucked you up. It’s my fault. But you have to change.”

  She made an appointment for me to see the magic doctor, and I have to admit I was kind of nervous. I could have refused to go, but I figured I’d play along. I mean, I didn’t have to listen to the dude. We walked into his office in Great Neck, New York, and I saw a kind, quiet man in his sixties. He asked my mom to step out of the office, and I sat in one of those psychiatrist chairs. My jitters were unfounded. We talked for thirty minutes. He asked me about school, my friends, my aspirations in life, what I liked to do, and why I had a problem coming home early. Then he asked me what my grades were like in school. I told him, “I get great grades, mostly As and an occasional B.” And he said, “Well then I really don’t understand what the problem is. Are you drinking or taking drugs?” I told him I smoked weed once in a while and I drink beer and vodka and orange juice sometimes, but that was the extent of my partying. I barely ever got drunk enough to have a hangover.

  Dr. Rice called my mom back in and asked her to sit down. “Look Barbara,” he said. “I’m going to keep this short because I think you have to look at the fact that Scott has great grades, and until his grades are affected by what he’s doing with his friends and staying out late, I see no problem with his schedule.”

  I looked at Dr. Rice like he was some kind of superhero. Here was a total figure of authority and someone my mom completely trusted. She dragged me there thinking Dr. Rice was going to straighten my ass out. And he took my side! I said, “Y’see! Y’see, Mom! I told you I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” And she said, “Okay, but the rule from now on is that if your grades slip, if your next report card comes and it’s not as good or better than the previous one then the curfew goes into effect. Are these the rules?” I told her I was fine with that. It was a total revelation.

  Suddenly, I knew the game. All I had to do was maintain my grades, and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. That was it! Dr. Rice had explained the secret of life to me. Whatever the rules are—whether they’re to keep your grades up, keep your boss happy, write good songs, be a great live band—keep the people that enable you to do what you want to do happy, and you can do anything you want in life. Thanks to Dr. Rice I was like, “That’s it, man! I’ve got life by the balls now.”

  It was a breeze because school came easy to me. I was a smart kid. If I did the absolute bare minimum I would get Bs, and if I applied myself in the least I’d get straight As. So it wasn’t hard for me to maintain my grades through junior high. With my social life taken care of, there was only one th
ing severely lacking—money. We got five dollars for allowance every week, which I knew wasn’t going to last for comics, records, and concert tickets. My mom was really stoked about the idea of me having a job. If I was ever lying on the couch, watching TV, not doing anything, she’d scream, “Get off your ass and get a job!”

  She didn’t need to say shit. I always wanted to make money so I’d be independent and not have to ask other people to buy me things. As a kid, you’re at the mercy of your parents when it comes to finances. I wanted that to end as soon as possible. Aside from shoveling snow, the first time I made an effort to make my own money was when I was twelve. We were still living in Long Island and I got a job delivering the Long Island Press. I’d wake up at 6 a.m., and there would be big bundles of papers waiting for me to pick up. I’d fit as many as I could in a basket on my bike and ride around the neighborhood throwing papers at people’s houses. Sometimes it would be pouring rain, and I’d have to put the papers in these little baggies that were like newspaper condoms. The brakes on my bike would get wet and barely work. I almost got sideswiped by a car a few times. Pretty soon I realized this newspaper delivery thing wasn’t worth risking my life for. I hated it and the pay was terrible. The end of the week would come, and I’d go to the guy in charge of the routes, and he’d hand me about ten dollars.

  The shittiest job I ever had was cleaning a fish store in a shopping center across the street from our house. That paid better than delivering papers, but I’d come home smelling like fish, which was fucking disgusting. I’d shower with really hot water and wash my hands for, like, ten minutes, but it still didn’t totally get rid of the smell. No one else seemed to notice, but I felt like Lady Macbeth trying to wash the blood off her hands. The only good thing about that job was I got to bring home free shrimp. My mom liked that. I just got sick of them after a while, so I quit and went on to the next shitty part-time job I could find.

  I had a basic foundation in rock and roll from my parents and my uncle. I loved Elton John, the Who, and KISS. I knew about Black Sabbath. But it wasn’t until I was in junior high at IS 25 that I really learned about hard rock and heavy metal. There was a small crew of eight to ten longhairs who would sit together at lunch and talk about music. Whatever my friends and I heard, we were always looking for something louder, faster, or heavier. We wanted to find the craziest drummer, the wildest singer, and the guitar player who made the craziest sounds. Our obsession was beyond geeky. We made charts and wrote in the names of all these players: Ritchie Blackmore, Ace Frehley, Jimmy Page, Joe Perry, Rick Nielsen, Ted Nugent, Tony Iommi. Then we’d walk around the lunchroom and get people to rate the guitar players from one to ten. For two years, Ritchie Blackmore won as best lead guitar player until we heard the first Van Halen record, and then we stopped making the lists because no one thought there could ever be a better guitar player than Eddie Van Halen.

  One kid, David Karibian, started bringing in a tiny boom box every day, and we’d listen to different tapes. He was actually the guy who introduced us to Van Halen. One day he came in with a tape queued to “Eruption,” this amazing Eddie Van Halen guitar solo that was like a concerto from another planet. When we walked over to the table he said, “Guys, wait until you hear this!” Then he hit play and eight or nine of us sat there with our jaws on the floor, not having any idea what we were even listening to and how it was possible. Then the super-­guitar-saturated version of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” started, and we were like, “Holy shit, who is this?!?”

  I went straight to the record store after school and bought Van Halen. Another kid, Zlotko “Golden” Novkovic, also came in with bands no one else had heard of. One day he asked me, “Have you heard AC/DC?” I said, “No, what’s that?”

  “Oh man, they’re great! They’re from Australia, they’re really, really hard rock, they’re probably the heaviest band I’ve ever heard!” He played Powerage at lunch. I remember thinking two things: “Wow, the guitar sounds so cool,” and “I’ve never heard vocals like that before.” Bon Scott was like no one else. His voice was so ballsy and it dripped with attitude. It was almost like he was laughing at you while he was singing. All I could think of was, “Wow, he sounds like a fucking pirate.” I loved their guitarist Angus Young even before I knew he wore a schoolboy outfit, rolled around the stage, and rode on Bon’s shoulders during shows. “Riff Raff” was so fast. I was like, “Jesus Christ, how do you play a song like that?” It was like someone had kicked Led Zeppelin in the balls and told them to man up. AC/DC quickly became my favorite band because KISS had already put out Love Gun and had lost some steam. I was getting much more into heavier stuff.

  Between 1976 and 1979 I listened to two hundred bands for the first time because every day someone brought in something new: Aerosmith, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest. Then came 1980, the best year for hard rock and heavy metal, ever. Ozzy Osbourne did Blizzard of Ozz, Judas Priest put out British Steel, Black Sabbath released Heaven and Hell with singer Ronnie James Dio, who kept the band alive after Ozzy was kicked out. Iron Maiden released their debut record, and Motörhead’s Ace of Spades came out as well. Holy crap!

  I would go to the Music Box every week with my friends and buy three to four metal records, and we would have to fight over them. Eventually we discovered Bleeker Bob’s in the West Village on 118 West Third Street. One time I was there I literally tried to rip the first Iron Maiden album out of the hands of a friend of mine. I saw Eddie—the band’s mascot—on the cover, and I thought, “That zombie horror artwork is cool. That’s gotta be good.”

  I was having a tug-of-war with this guy over who was gonna buy it. After some well-chosen words, and maybe because my friend didn’t want to spend six or seven dollars on a band he didn’t know, I won the battle. If I hadn’t won, I would’ve gone home and gotten my shitty little tape recorder that you used to have to use two fingers to push play and record on, and I would’ve brought that to my friend’s house and held it in front of a speaker to tape the record so I’d have something to listen to until I could find another copy. Yeah, it’d sound terrible but so what? We didn’t know anything else. When I hear people say, “I hate MP3s, they sound like shit,” I’m like, “Fuck you, you have no idea, you first-world-problem-having motherfucker.”

  When I got an album, I took it home and carefully slit the cellophane on the album jacket. I never wanted to damage one of the covers because they were like pieces of art. That’s one thing that’s been tragically lost in the transition from albums to CDs, and now MP3s. Most kids don’t know what they’re missing. I peeled the plastic off the Iron Maiden album jacket and pulled out the record, which was housed in a white paper sleeve. I carefully reached in and removed the black twelve-inch disc. Taking care to hold it by the edges, I placed the gleaming, grooved slice of vinyl on the turntable and lowered the needle. The staccato guitar riff and wah-wah countermelody of “Prowler” began, and right away I thought, “Holy fuck! Best band ever! I can’t wait to tell my friends about it.”

  The next day I was all excited. “Guys, guys, guys! Have you heard Iron Maiden yet?” And four people in our clique went, “Duh! We got that last month.”

  One time, though, I was first to the table with something special. I was at the Music Box, and I saw Ace of Spades by Motörhead. I had heard of Motörhead, but I didn’t know their music. So I bought it and went home, excited to put it on. The first song, “Ace of Spades,” started. It was so fast and the bass was rumbling. The guitars ripped my head off, and the vocals came in and they were raspy and harsh but still kind of melodic. I had never heard anything like it. In 1980 they were playing the hardest, fastest, and most aggressive music on the planet, hands down, and broke my brain! I looked at the cover again and thought, “Who are these three Mexicans and how do they play so fast?” I had no idea they were English! They looked like banditos, all dressed in leather with cowboy hats on, and they were standing in the desert. It looked like they were ready for a gu
nfight. Naturally, when I played it for my friends, everyone loved it, and, bang, Motörhead became one of our favorite bands. As a guitar player, they were a huge influence for me and early Anthrax.

  But AC/DC were still my favorite, which is why my son’s middle name is Young. After I heard that Powerage record, I went out and bought their back catalog—High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock—they were all amazing, full of bluesy-grit, sleaze, and power. The band came to New York in ’78 and headlined the Palladium. I desperately scraped together nickels and dimes, but I had already spent my allowance money to see Cheap Trick, so I didn’t have enough for AC/DC. That’s the same reason I never saw Thin Lizzy. I had one more chance to see AC/DC when they headlined the Garden in 1979 on the Highway to Hell tour. But, once again, I was broke. I figured I’d be able to see them when they came back the next time.

  Tragically, Bon Scott died the next year. He passed out after a night of heavy drinking and a friend left him in a car, where he choked on his vomit and died. I found out at school from a friend. At first I didn’t believe him and thought he was either misinformed or fucking with me. Then I heard the report on the radio, and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Bon’s death hit me hard, maybe in part because I never got to see him live but also because he was my first real rock and roll hero who didn’t make it to thirty-five. Jimi Hendrix died when I was seven, and I remember my parents talking about that, but it didn’t really affect me. Bon was my favorite singer, and I couldn’t believe that he could have drunk himself to death. He seemed invincible. I still kick myself that I missed those two New York shows.

  Chapter 4

  The Birth of Anthrax