the morning, I woke up on the floor with the taste of that punch in my mouth, feeling like an iron spike had been nailed through my head. I went home to my grandmother’s to sleep it off; Steven remained behind, opting to linger in bed downstairs. I was home for about ten minutes when my dad called to let me know that Steven should fear for his life. The woman he had spent the evening with had confessed and her husband was very unhappy about it. The man, according to my dad, planned to “throttle” Steven, which Tony assured me was a very real threat. When I didn’t seem to take him seriously, Dad told me that the guy had actually promised to kill Steven. In the end, nothing happened, so Steven got away with it but it was a clear indication of things to come. At thirteen, he had narrowed his life goals down to exactly two: fucking chicks and being in a rock band. I can’t fault him for his prescience.
In his thirteen-year-old musical wisdom, which (probably due to his advanced womanizing skills) I considered superior to mine, Steven had concluded that there were only three bands that mattered in rock and roll: Kiss, Boston, and Queen. Steven paid tribute to them every day, all day, when he should have been in school. His grandmother worked in a bakery and left the house at five a.m. each day; she had no idea that Steven rarely went to class. His day consisted of playing Kiss records turned up to ten, while bashing away at a little Wal-Mart electric guitar and amp, both turned up to ten as well. I’d go over and hang out with him, and he’d be yelling at me over all the noise, “Hey! We should start a band, you know!?”
Steven has such an open, carefree soul that his enthusiasm is tremendously contagious. I didn’t doubt his intention and drive; I was convinced immediately that it would happen. He had elected himself the guitar player, and we decided that I would play bass. When I listen to music now, after twenty-five years of playing, I can isolate all of the instruments; I can hear the key of the guitar and right away I can usually think of several ways to play the song. By the time I was thirteen, I had listened to rock and roll for years; I’d seen concerts and knew what instruments make up a rock band, but I had no idea which instrument made each sound in the music. I knew what a guitar was, but I had no idea of the differences between a guitar and a bass and Steven’s playing at the time didn’t enlighten me at all.
When he and I would walk around town, we used to pass a music school on Fairfax and Santa Monica called Fairfax Music School (today it’s a chiropractor’s office), so I figured that was a good place to learn to play bass. So one day I stopped in, walked up to the desk, and just said, “I want to play bass.” The receptionist introduced me to one of the teachers, a guy named Robert Wolin. When Robert came out to talk to me, he wasn’t exactly what I expected: he was a medium-sized white guy wearing Levi’s and a tucked-in plaid shirt. He had a bushy mustache, a five o’clock shadow, and unkempt shaggy brown hair—it had probably been a real haircut once, but it had gotten away from him. Needless to say, Robert didn’t look like a rock star at all.
He did, however, patiently inform me that I’d need an actual bass of my own to take lessons, which was something I hadn’t considered. I asked my grandmother for help and she gave me an old flamenco guitar with one nylon string on it that she had packed away in a closet. When I met Robert again at the school, he took one look at my guitar and understood that he’d better start at the very beginning, because I had no idea that what I was holding wasn’t necessarily a bass. Robert put on the Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” picked up his guitar, and played along with the riff and the lead. And that’s when I heard the sound. Whatever Robert was doing, that was it. I stared at Robert’s guitar with total wonder. I started pointing at it.
“That’s what I want to do,” I told him. “That.”
Robert was really encouraging; he drew some chord charts for me, showed me proper fingering on his guitar, and tuned the one string I had. He also informed me that I should get the remaining five strings in the very near future. Guitar came into my life that suddenly and that innocently. There was no thought, no premeditation; it wasn’t part of a grand plan outside of playing in Steven’s fantasy band. Ten years later I would be, with all the perks that Steven had dreamed about: traveling the world, playing sold-out shows, and having more chicks at our disposal than we could handle …all thanks to that battered piece of wood my grandmother dug out of her closet.
Guitar replaced BMX as my main obsession literally overnight. It was unlike anything I’d ever done: it was a form of expression as satisfying and personal to me as art and drawing, but on a much deeper level. Being able to create the sound that had spoken to me in music ever since I can remember was more empowering than anything I’d ever known. The change was as instantaneous as turning on a light, and every bit as illuminating. I went home from music school and copied Robert’s methods, putting on my favorite songs and doing my best to play along. I did what I could with one string; after a few hours I could follow the key changes and mimic the melody of a few songs in the most remedial way. Tunes like Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4,” Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused,” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” can be played down the E string so I contented myself with those over and over again. Simply the understanding that I could mimic the songs on my stereo was enough to imprint the guitar on my reality forever.
I took lessons from Robert on my worn-out flamenco guitar throughout the summer before ninth grade—with all six strings in place, which, of course, he taught me how to tune. I was always amazed when he put on a record that he didn’t know and learned it on the spot in a few minutes. I set about achieving that ability for myself: like every overeager beginner, I tried to jump to that level straightaway and, like every good teacher, Robert forced me to master the fundamentals. He taught me basic major, minor, and blues scales and all of the standard chord positions. He’d also sketch chord charts to my favorite songs, such as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Whole Lotta Love,” that I was to play as my reward once I’d done the week’s exercises. Usually I’d skip straight to the reward and when I showed up at the music school the next day, it was obvious to Robert that I hadn’t even touched my homework. Sometimes I liked to play as if I still had only one string. Every song I liked had a riff in it, so playing it all up and down one string was more fun until my fingers learned the proper form.
My BMX racing gear gathered dust in my closet. My friends wondered where I was at night. I saw Danny McCracken one day while I was riding back from music school, my guitar slung over my back. He asked me where I’d been and if I’d won any races lately. I told him that I was a guitar player now. He sized me up, looked at my worn-out six-string, and stared hard right into my eyes. “Oh yeah?” He had a very confused look on his face, as if he wasn’t sure what to make of what I’d told him. We sat there awkwardly in silence for a minute on our bikes then said our good-byes. It was the last time I ever saw him.
I respected my guitar teacher, Robert, but I naively and impatiently failed to see the direct line between the fundamentals he was teaching me and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin songs that I wanted to play. It all came to a head soon enough, once I discovered my personal instruction manual, so to speak; it was a used book I found in a guitar store bargain bin called How to Play Rock Guitar. This book had all of the chord charts, tablature, and sample solos from greats like Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, and Jimi Hendrix. It even came with a little floppy 45 that demonstrated the proper way to play what was in the book. I took that thing home and devoured it, and once I was capable of mimicking the sounds on that little record, I was soon improvising on my own, and then I was beside myself. Once I’d heard myself lay down patterns that sounded like rock-and-roll lead guitar it was as if I’d found the Holy Grail. That book changed my life; I still have my worn-out copy in a trunk somewhere and I’ve never seen another one before or since. I’ve looked for it plenty of times to no avail. I feel like it was the only copy left in the world and that it was there that day waiting specifically for me. That book gave me the skills I sought and once I’d begun to master them I quit music school forever.
I was now a “rock guitar player,” as far as I was concerned, so out of necessity, I borrowed one hundred bucks from my grandmother and bought an electric guitar. It was a very cheap Les Paul copy made by a company called Memphis Guitars. I was attracted to the shape, because most of my favorite players played Les Pauls—it epitomized rock guitar to me. That said, I didn’t know enough to even know who Les Paul