I was 12 years old and on a flight bound for Pittsburgh when I had an epiphany. It dawned on me-while sitting in coach with Nirvana’s newly released “In Utero” blaring through my headphones-that I was destined to be a rock star. The trashy guitar set against a backdrop of Cobain’s screeching vocals sparked in me rock star dreams of music, girls, drugs, and debauchery. Admittedly, all very enticing to a boy from the ‘burbs of a sheltered Maine city. The one big obstacle: I didn’t own or know how to play an instrument. Oh yeah, and I can hardly carry a tune.
But none of this was about to stop me. When I returned home, I set out with $90 in hand–honest savings for a 12-year old–to a dive music shop and bought a used Premier bass guitar. Without so much as a lesson, I teamed up with a childhood friend who, having just bought a guitar, also had rock star dreams. The result of our union was a two-man pop/punk/grunge band called Slow Children. It was lame, unrestricted, magical noise that would carry us (not so gracefully) through the trying years of adolescence.
The high school years proved to be fruitful ones. I learned to play guitar, broadened my musical horizons, and fell in love with The Beatles. Meanwhile, Slow Children followed the typical rock star path. We grew in numbers then broke up. We got back together. We survived through a series of name changes. Each of us pursued solo careers and side projects. Despite our rock star ways, we didn’t gain any recognition and girls still wouldn’t talk to us. But the music was always there. With the music and the trusty bong, we were invincible.
These days, I’m still in a band-with those same high school friends-and we’ve gained some local recognition, but I’m far from being the quintessential rock star. In my everyday life I remain soft-spoken and reserved. Woody Allenesque, my roommate says. I don’t go out much. I’m not fond of big raging parties and, sadly, I can’t stomach beer. But beneath that timid, dorky exterior, I am 135 pounds of pure revelry. I take to the stage, shed my inhibitions, and bask in the spotlight. I face the crowd and think, “If my friends from high school could see me now.” Then it dawns on me: my only friends from high school share the stage with me. And that brief moment of self-importance exits stage left.
Nonetheless, the audience applauds, and I taste that bit of fulfillment that comes with fame. (Once in a while a girl will even mutter a few words to me.) The music-that’s what keeps me going. To me, rock ‘n’ roll is many things: it’s a friend wearing a beat-up pair of Chucks passed out on a beer-soaked, cigarette-burned rug in a dingy asbestos-filled basement. Rock ‘n’ roll is waking up disoriented with a ringing in the ears and the smell of smoke permeating through your hair. Rock ‘n’ roll is art. It’s raw, it’s obnoxious, and above all, it’s beautiful.
Everyone needs an escape. Mine is rock ‘n’ roll, and I recommend it to everyone. No, I will probably never and perform in an arena-size venue or snort lines of coke from the bare flesh of a groupie, but in the music I take refuge from my all too familiar world of pseudo-reclusion. If Rolling Stone were to ask me to impart inspiring words of advice to the masses, I would tell them: “Find the rock in you. Take a day of your life, don’t bathe, don’t change your clothes. Smoke cigarettes or at least light a few up so your room smells like a club. Be angry with something. Listen to The Stooges’ “Raw Power” at top volume. Just absorb the rock.” You might not morph into a raging sex symbol like Robert Plant (I haven’t … yet), but I guarantee that it will liberate you … at least for that day.