No Regrets (6 page)

I do know this much: not long after that, the lineup shifted, and Charlie moved over to bass and rhythm guitar. I became a lead guitar player, and for the most part I’ve been there ever since.

By the time I was seventeen I’d been kicked out of
DeWitt Clinton and transferred to Roosevelt High School. While my academic career remained something of an embarrassment, I’d at least gravitated away from the tough guys in my immediate area and begun hanging out primarily with musicians. I was also meeting a lot of different girls, often from different neighborhoods. I had a girlfriend named Kathy in Yonkers for a while. We met at a dance and started hanging out. It was through Kathy, coincidentally, that I reconnected with a kid named Tom Doyle, who had grown up down the block from me. Tommy and I were good friends up until the age of ten or eleven, when he was hit by a car while playing in the street. It was a horribly traumatic event for him and his family, and for his buddies. Tommy and I saw each other pretty much every day, played stickball and basketball together, and then all of a sudden he was gone. No one talked about it very much. I knew he was in the hospital for a long time, but he never came back to the neighborhood. I’d forgotten all about Tommy when I ran into him one night while I was playing at a high school dance in Yonkers, with a band called the Magic People (trippy, huh?). Turned out he lived not far away; his family had moved to Yonkers shortly after Tommy got out of the hospital. Since then he’d become a serious
hippie (if there was such a thing). Tommy had long hair and a beard, smoked a ton of pot, and played in a band. We talked for a while that night, reminisced about the old neighborhood, and promised to keep in touch. And we did. In fact, though I’d eventually lose touch with Tommy again (I know he wound up playing with acoustic hippie street rockers David Peel and the Lower East Side), for a while we became close friends. I’d regularly make the trip from the Bronx to Yonkers to hang out with Kathy and Tommy. It was a good step for me, if only because it helped take me out of the Bronx, and away from some of my old friends and partners in crime.

Although I couldn’t quite explain it, I realized on some level that life in Yonkers had more potential. I knew instinctively that by moving northward, into Yonkers and Westchester County, and associating with people who seemed to have better lives than I did, then maybe my life would improve as well. Maybe there would be more opportunity. The differences were not glaring, but I could feel them nonetheless. Almost everyone in my neighborhood lived in apartments; in Yonkers and Westchester, a lot of people seemed to own houses. I’ve never been particularly motivated by greed (I wouldn’t have walked away from KISS—twice!—if money meant all that much to me), and it wasn’t like I grew up in poverty. But I did want more out of life, and I just got the sense that if I hung around with folks who were more successful than I was, maybe some of that good fortune would rub off. It wasn’t exactly a scientific theory, but it proved to be valid. You couldn’t help but notice, even back in the late 1960s, that the Bronx was not a destination. It was a place people generally tried to escape. As a teenager I saw it time and again: if you made enough money, you got the hell out of there. You moved north into Westchester, bought a little house with some land, maybe raised a family. Or if you really had cash, you moved south into Manhattan. And the reason for this, of course, was that the Bronx was slowly deteriorating. It was becoming poorer, tougher, and more dangerous. I knew all of this through firsthand experience. If not for music, I’d almost certainly have been sucked into the gang life for good, and
things might well have turned out badly for me. As it happened, though, playing guitar allowed me to enter a completely different world.

Not that I didn’t maintain some of my ties with the Ducky Gang, or at least with individual gang members. And for some reason they didn’t mind my lack of commitment. It’s kind of hard to explain, but the way I did things—the way I communicated with people—I could get away with a lot. You might say I was a politician… or a bullshit artist (I mean, really, what’s the distinction?). In the same way that I could talk to girls, and juggle multiple girlfriends, I had a natural rapport with guys. Whether they were laid-back, pot-smoking guitar players or guntoting gangsters, I could get along with them. I’ve always tried not to be abrasive with people. I’m the kind of person who can assess a situation and figure it out; I’m good at reading people. For a while, yeah, I had to be a bit evasive when it came to the Ducky Boys. If they wanted me to be involved in some sort of gang activity—something I knew would get me in deep shit—I’d just be cordial but noncommittal.

“Tuesday night? Yeah, probably, I’ll be available. Give me a call, okay?”

And then of course I wouldn’t be around to take the call. Honestly? I had no interest in the gang scene anymore. It had served its purpose. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen and had gotten some serious insight into where these guys were going, and how their lives were turning out, I wanted no part of it. The criminal activity grew progressively more intense and reckless. The violence and drug use escalated. Admittedly, by the time I was in my thirties I had drug problems that were as severe as any of these guys’, but not when I was in high school. I could see them fooling around with heroin and cocaine, and it scared me. Guys were getting sent to prison; they were overdosing and dying. I saw nothing glamorous about it anymore. When I was thirteen or fourteen? Sure. I wanted and needed the protection of a gang. You do what you have to do in order to survive, right? Being part of the Duckies gave that to me. I liked the excitement and the camaraderie. But the deeper I waded, the more apprehensive I became.

Ultimately it came down to this: if you weren’t around, well… you weren’t around. After a while, I didn’t have to make excuses anymore. Out of sight, out of mind.

We look for kindred spirits, and in my case that meant
other musicians, in particular guitar players who wore their hair long and favored rock star fashion and blues-influenced rock ’n’ roll (as opposed to, say, pop music). Those people were few and far between in the Bronx, but you could find them if you looked hard enough. For a while in high school I lived just a couple of blocks from a guy named Emil “Peppy” Thielhelm. He was more commonly known by one of his stage names, Peppy Magoo or Peppy Castro. Peppy played rhythm guitar and sang lead for the Blues Magoos, who were at the forefront of the 1960s psychedelic music movement. I’d seen the band play when they opened for the Who and Cream at the RKO (later that same year they had a Top 10 hit single with “(We Ain’t) Got Nothin’ Yet,”) and I knew they were a New York band. But I didn’t know at the time that Peppy lived practically down the street. When I found out, of course, I did my best to strike up an acquaintanceship, if not a friendship. Peppy was a cool guy who didn’t mind hanging out with a younger kid and showing him a few tricks. I can vividly remember sitting in Peppy’s basement, each of us with guitar in hand, him demonstrating bar chords and other more complicated maneuvers, and me soaking it all up.

And I remember going to Orchard Beach in Pelham Bay that summer, and lying on the sand, listening to the radio with my friends, getting all excited when “(We Ain’t) Got Nothin’ Yet” crackled through the speaker.

Holy shit! That’s Peppy!

The Blues Magoos were out on a national tour, getting major Top 40 airplay. By any reasonable definition, they had hit the big time. It didn’t last, unfortunately, but for a while they enjoyed a pretty good run of success and developed a vigorous cult following. I looked at their
achievements not with envy or awe, but with a sense of encouragement. When I saw that Peppy could make it, and have a song on the radio (remember, this was the 1960s, a time when there was no greater validation for a musician than Top 40 airplay), it made it that much more believable to me… that much more attainable.

It was one thing to see Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend in concert, and to say, “I’d like to do that.”

It was quite another to smoke pot and jam with a local boy like Peppy Castro, and then watch him release a hit single.

I wanted to be like Clapton and Townshend.

I knew I could be like Peppy.

But I learned from all of them. Concerts were like school to me. I’d study the guitar player—not just how his hands moved along the neck and strings, but also how he interacted with the audience. What would he do to get the crowd excited and involved? I realized early on that while virtuosity was important, showmanship also mattered. They were two pieces of the puzzle, and if either was missing, the picture wasn’t always complete.

The groups that just stood there and played weren’t always visually exciting. I felt theatrical rock was the way to go. That’s why I was putting smoke bombs in my amplifiers when I was sixteen. I studied Pete Townshend extensively in my early years—the way he played chords and inversions, his songwriting and use of harmony, and of course, his live performances. Townshend, Page, Clapton, and Hendrix—I had some of the best teachers in the world. I like to say that I never took a guitar lesson, but really that’s not quite accurate. I did take lessons—from the best. By studying their work and emulating their actions, I became the guitar player I am today. The fact that I don’t read music is irrelevant. That’s true of a lot of rock guitarists. If you love playing, you figure it out on your own. You put in the time. You study, and you practice till your fingers bleed.

What probably made it easier for me is that I grew up in a household where music was important. I had the natural talent and the dexterity.
It was inherent. And I was exposed to music my whole life. I’d hear my sister play scales and just pick it up, almost by osmosis. It was never that hard for me to figure out something on a record. I’d be jamming with my friends, and I’d hear them struggling to play something, and I’d say, “No, no, no. Watch, it’s like this.” And then I’d demonstrate. I don’t want to say playing guitar was easy, because that implies a lack of effort. But there’s no question that it came easier to me than it did to others. I remember that for a while in my mid- to late teens, when I was playing in one band or another, I almost felt guilty when I got paid for playing gigs. It didn’t feel like work. I was having too much fun. After a while, though, I started to accept the notion that performing could also be profitable. And I began to think, Wow, imagine doing this full-time as a professional. Imagine the women, the money, the adulation.

Imagine being a rock star.

It was a no-brainer.

But I also figured I had to devote most of my time and energy to the pursuit of this goal. And so, midway through my senior year at Roosevelt, only a few credits shy of a degree, I dropped out of high school. Stupid, I know. I mean, who quits in their senior year? But I had absolutely no interest in school anymore. It was, in my mind anyway, a complete waste of time.

If not for Jeanette Trerotola, I’d probably still be a
high school dropout.

We started dating when I was eighteen years old. It was, almost from the beginning, a turbulent and passionate relationship—we’ve always known how to push each other’s buttons. Jeanette and I got to know each other through her cousin Jodie and Tom Doyle. Tommy had a rehearsal studio in Yonkers, and in the evenings it became a favorite hangout for a lot of local rockers. You could drop by most nights and jam for a while, and eventually the jam would turn into a party. I’d visit Tommy a couple of times a week, hang out all weekend, drink beer,
smoke pot, and jam. Well, one night I went to a birthday party at this girl Lynn’s house just down the street. I had been seeing Lynn and she was Jodie’s best friend. At the party I was introduced to two girls from Ardsley, New York, which is in Westchester County. They were both high school seniors and stylishly dressed. It was obvious to me that they were more refined than some of the girls at the party. One of them was named Diane Fratta; the other was Jeanette Trerotola.

We spent a little time getting acquainted, but since I was with Lynn I had to hold back. Not long after that I broke up with Lynn and started dating Diane, who was Jeanette’s best friend. I don’t recall exactly why I gravitated toward Diane instead of Jeanette—it probably had something to do with the fact that she had this really cool, layered haircut that I’d seen on only a few chicks. Diane was cool, but she was also a little shy and laid-back; regardless I was attracted to her, and she was attracted to me. Unfortunately her parents were less than thrilled with the prospect of Diane dating a guitar-toting, jobless high school dropout from the Bronx.

Can’t imagine why.

Once you grow up and have kids, of course, you develop a different perspective on this sort of thing. You want what’s best for your children, and sometimes (maybe most of the time) the child wants something else. I can see now that Diane’s parents weren’t being mean by voicing their disapproval; they were just looking out for their daughter. But there wasn’t a whole lot they could do to stop us from dating. Or, at least, I didn’t think there was much they could do. As it turned out, I was wrong. The summer after Diane graduated from high school, her parents decided that it was time for a very long, distant summer vacation. The whole family went away, and I was left behind to lick my wounds.

What was a boy to do?

Well, Diane was gone… but her best friend was still in town.

We had been hanging out regularly with a group of friends at a bar called the Candlelight Inn in Westchester. I’d actually been setting Jeanette up with a few friends of mine when we double dated, but
it never worked out. Jeanette was from an upper-middle-class Italian family, and her parents naturally didn’t approve of any of the guys she brought home from the Bronx. They didn’t approve of me, either, for obvious reasons. Jeanette was headstrong and fun to be around. We fell into a relationship almost by accident. It was strange. We’d already developed a bit of a friendship that revolved around mutual acquaintances. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we were involved in a fairly intense relationship.