My Life With Deth (4 page)

Another time, I was out with a couple buddies from a very strict religious family. They were into cool music, though, and turned me on to more eclectic and trippy bands like the Cars and Yes. I was with them the first time I smoked marijuana. I didn’t get high that first time, and I thought, “There’s nothing wrong with this stuff—it must just be a psychological high.” I had heard in physical education health class that some drugs provided a physical high, while others were psychological. I didn’t understand it, but I thought that maybe this was what pot was. I smoked it again one night a few weeks later, on the way to a church roller-skating function. I was toking in the car, and I remember choking and coughing on the smoke, and seeds falling out and burning holes in my friends’ car seats. I didn’t feel anything until I stepped out of the car. It was probably during October, so it was cold outside, and I walked in the door of the roller-skating club, and all of a sudden the pot just came over me. My eyes were red; I had the munchies; I couldn’t stop laughing; I was out of control. But no one died and no one went to jail, so I thought, “Well, that’s safe: I’ll definitely be doing that again. Add that one to the list.”

Just like my first night of drinking, I kept the pot smoking hidden, as it was important to me not to be found out. This later became the routine of my drug abuse. I felt a little weird for a day or so afterward, because of the aftereffects, and also because I was lying and doing something illegal, which led to feelings of guilt and shame. It was as if I were in a secret little club at school that my parents and teachers couldn’t find out about. I still thought it was all part of normal teenage life, and for many it was. But according to my upbringing, it was definitely out of line and I knew it. Drugs and alcohol were supposed to have no place in the life of a teenager.

My older brother, Eliot, didn’t smoke pot, but he drank casually with his friends in town. I do remember as a teenager that he bought himself a Pontiac Trans Am for his sixteenth birthday and he was the envy of the town. I was happy because I had an older brother with cool wheels, until I woke up one morning to see his car being towed up
the driveway by a tow truck because he’d crashed it the night before.

All in all, the party life was pretty fun in small-town Jackson, although every now and then I wondered if I was doing the right thing and questioned my own morals. A turning point came when I went to a keg party over on the east side of town where it wasn’t so affluent. I was doing some drinking and smoking some pot with buddies in the living room. I knew the guy hosting the party was a bit of a troublemaker and not someone I would normally hang out with. He was certainly not someone with whom I had much in common, until I started getting loaded. But I had a moment of clarity while I was at his party: I realized that I was now willing to associate with people I really didn’t like, because they had something I wanted—in other words, booze and pot.

I left that party with another buddy, who was driving and had just gotten his license. Almost immediately upon leaving the party, we saw red flashing police lights behind us and we got pulled over. This was about a month before my sixteenth birthday. I was busted for drinking from an open container and being underage. I got a ticket and there had to be a court appearance, so I had to tell my parents.

It was very shaming for them, and they were very bummed that I was in trouble with the law. I was embarrassed, too: in a small town like Jackson, everybody was obviously going to know that I had a court appearance. It also brought about an awareness that I would have to face ten years later in alcohol recovery, which was that I didn’t get in trouble every time I drank, but every time I got in trouble I had been drinking.

I knew my parents were disappointed. They grounded me for two months, which turned out to be the only two months of continuous sobriety I would know for the next ten years. The upside is that because I came straight home after school each day I practiced bass a lot, which in some ways probably helped me to become a much better bassist, because I had no distractions. I made the appearance in court, where I got off lightly. The drinking laws weren’t that strict at the time, so I got a
slap on the wrist in the form of a small fine. The main thing was that I was still able to get my driver’s license a month later. The bummer was that I was still grounded, so I couldn’t go out and do anything with my friends. The truth is, I didn’t use this time of reflection as a way to learn the lesson. Rather, I figured out how to avoid getting caught next time.

Looking back, I recall that sometimes my own life got a little dark, something I now know could have been a symptom of alcoholism later in my life. I distinctly remember going through three phases of fear as a kid. First, I had an extreme fear that the house was going to burn down: it was just a weird phase I went through. Then I thought I was going to be poisoned, because we were always out in the farm sheds where they had fertilizer and herbicides and oil, and I worried that I’d die if I ever accidentally licked my fingers. Then, when I was a teenager, I had an extreme fear of getting cancer. I don’t know the significance of these phases, but they always seemed tied to some other insecurity. I know I was always afraid of my father’s wrath, because he was a strict authoritarian. But as much as I feared my father, I thought like him in many ways. He was something of a single-minded, very focused, almost workaholic person. Being self-employed enabled him to be that way, another path I would follow in my adult years.

Farming can be a reclusive life, especially running farm machinery for days on end in the fields by yourself. My father wasn’t the kind of guy who especially liked running the machinery: he seemed bored with it and became introspective. I was like that, too, for most of my life, starting with that little two-month grounding from my drinking escapades. Later I realized that this type of isolation thinking is a typical pattern of alcoholism, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Through all this, my band Toz continued. Our drummer was a guy named Justin. He was an upbeat kind of guy. He liked rock ’n’ roll, and he had girls around quite a bit. His sister Jane was actually my first girlfriend in the fourth grade, but she broke up with me, probably because I was too afraid to kiss her!

Jane and Justin’s family was really cool and had a great energy
about them. They lived on a lake in the Jackson area and let Toz play summer shows on their patio for all of their neighbors. Those were great summer days. Justin was always dating girls and in the high school social scene, and as a result I got plugged into that scene as well. Justin was the first musician I knew who actually got a real job as a dishwasher so he could have money to do things. In a way this was a drag, because we had to start planning our band rehearsals and gigs around his work schedule. Because my family had me doing farm work during the daytime, my evenings were free to rehearse and do shows. Not so with Justin, which was my first indicator that a job of any sort must never interfere with my music or band life.

Greg and I were now trying to write our own songs. We were the singers in Toz, though it was difficult for me because my voice was starting to change as I transitioned from childhood to manhood. Nonetheless, I was starting to move into professional show business, for all intents and purposes. I wore platform boots and scarves, trying to be as fashionable as a Jackson, Minnesota, rock star could be.

I was also the guy in the band who tended to the business of our bands. In this, of course, my father assisted me with the finances. He and I had many late-night conversations, with him philosophizing about life and the opportunities that lay ahead for me. With glass in hand, he would warn me of the dangers of the showbiz lifestyle, to which I was becoming accustomed. In many ways, the business attributes were the parts of my music lifestyle he could relate to, and that was his connection to my interest in the whole thing.

Meanwhile, I continued to be a reasonably good student. I enjoyed my English studies and even public speaking. I’m sure that led to my interests in writing, and explains why I’m not so shy in front of the camera or addressing large groups of people in a public forum. Different things come naturally to each of us, and those were natural to me. I also enjoyed history and social studies. The teachings in those courses seemed more applicable in my day-to-day life, and I’ve found them useful in my world travels, even to this day. I think I also found a connection
with the teachers in those subjects, too, which always helped me excel in their classes.

I’ve looked back at my report cards, and it’s obvious that when I applied myself and took an interest, I was pretty much a straight-B student, with the occasional A and C, depending on my interest in the subjects being taught. I could have been a straight-A student, but I can look at my reports now and see clearly which semester it was that I started smoking pot and drinking, because my grades suddenly became consistent C’s and D’s. When drugs and alcohol crept in, academics fell by the wayside.

Music was my savior in many ways, despite the associated habits. There was a kid on the school bus named Jason, a very rough, rebellious type of kid, who bullied me and called me ”Little Gordy,” because my dad’s name was Gordon. He’d pick on me and smash my head against the window of the bus just for fun, and I never fought back because he would only have beaten me more. But when I was fifteen, and became known around town as the guy who played in rock bands, he started finding common ground with me and talking to me on the school bus about Ted Nugent. Suddenly there was no more banging my head against the window. By becoming a popular bassist in the area, I had gained his respect. That wouldn’t be the last time the rebel crowd let me in because I was a musician. It taught me a survival skill, and one that appealed to my ego. If I was good at the bass, life would give me all that I needed. Including respect.

I was starting to lead a double life. I carried a secret around, especially in front of my dad, who was supporting my music career. His policy was “If you boys are going to drink, I’d rather you drank at home.” This was a double-edged sword, because he really didn’t want us drinking, but he knew we probably wouldn’t drink because we were at home.

At the same time, my parents were throwing parties and drinking with their friends. I remember waking up one morning after my parents had a really big party, and they had a somber look on their faces.
They told me that a friend of theirs had drowned in our swimming pool the previous night while I was asleep. An ambulance had come and gone. That was a very sobering moment for everybody, and an indicator that as much fun as the party life could be, there were often serious consequences, too.

When I was sixteen we took a big family vacation, as we did every couple of years. We were taking a trip down to Florida, and we were going to stop at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville to see some of the shows for a couple of nights. It was really painful for me, because Toz had a gig at a club called the Jackson Disco while I was away. The venue was owned by a local proprietor and was one of the only nightclubs in town. It was definitely a seedy scene, complete with alcohol and the associated nightlife. But it was a big thing for the band, and I had to turn it down to go on vacation with my family, which tore me apart.

Playing shows was becoming everything to me, and to have to cancel a show for any reason whatsoever was simply not acceptable in my book, even a dinky little gig like the one at the Jackson Disco. Performing in my band was my life. It was what I knew I was going to do forever. My parents said, “What, are you crazy? Family is everything!” but I was like, “Not when you’re a rock ’n’ roll musician!” In fact, I still struggle with this issue. Even though I’m a lot older and wiser these days and my kids mean the world to me, my passion for playing versus my commitment to family can be a real struggle—especially when you’re wired for sound like I am.

I went into a music store in Atlanta when my family and I were on this vacation to Florida. At this point I had my Gibson EB-0 and Dan Armstrong basses, plus my Rickenbacker 4001, but I really wanted to get a B.C. Rich, because they were the cool metal axe at the time. They were very expensive, though. I remember seeing a Peavey T40 bass guitar, which was a good-sounding bass and fairly easy to play. It cost $240. But my dad asked, “Is that really the bass you want?” I said, “Well, really the bass I want is a B.C. Rich Mockingbird . . .” and he said, “How much is that?” I said, “Well, I know I can get one from this place
called East Coast Sound in Danbury, Connecticut, for about nine hundred dollars.” I was afraid to tell my dad this because I thought he’d freak out, but he came back with a statement that I’ve never forgotten.

He said, “You know, it’s better to spend more money and buy right the first time, than to buy something you don’t really want and have to keep going back and spending more money over and over again to get what you really wanted in the first place.” He added, “If that’s what you really want, why don’t we set our sights on that, and I’ll help you get it?” He came to me and found common ground there, and that was how we bonded on that vacation. I really started to appreciate his business acumen. Even though he didn’t have a musical ear, he really did understand business, even as it applied to entertainment. There is a saying that goes “Give a man a fish, and you’ve fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.” It turns out that sacrificing that gig back in Jackson for a family vacation gave me a chance to learn from my father a lesson about money that would feed me for a lifetime.

After the vacation we got that B.C. Rich Mockingbird bass, and it was the one I eventually took to California with me, the one that is in the earliest Megadeth photos from 1983 to ’85.

Why did I want to go to California? Well, there were only a few places a budding rock star could really make it big: New York, London, or Los Angeles. L.A. seemed cool. It had sun, beaches, girls, and more recently big bands like Van Halen who were bringing a lot of attention to the music scene there. Plus, there was a group from the nearby town of Fairmont called Survivor, who were a really good band playing original music. They had played around the area back home, at places like the Jackson Disco, and at a nearby venue called the Fox Lake Ballroom, which was an old ballroom from the 1930s and ’40s where people went in previous years to dance to swing bands. A lot of big groups out of Minneapolis would come and play at Fox Lake, and me, Greg, and my bandmates would always go to hear them play. We saw professional acts and watched how they were doing it.