perfectly reasonable coping mechanism.
Since Michelle was reluctant to offer, I stole some of her books; after just a few days of study, I went to work, crafting a doll out of bread dough, using poppy seeds to spell out W-I-L-B-U-R and tying a noose made out of string around the doll’s neck. Then I recited an incantation from the book of spells. Finally, at the very end, I picked up the doll and snapped off one of its legs.
Did it work?
I can’t say for sure, but I do know that a short time later Wilbur was involved in a car accident; his leg was broken. Given the nature of life in that part of the world—the way people drank heavily and drove without regard to consequence—and given that Wilbur was an imbecilic jerk, I suppose some sort of crippling episode was inevitable.
Then again…
Kind of creepy, huh?
AFTER MY HIATUS in Idaho, I returned to Orange County and loosely resumed the pursuit of a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Since I liked cars and knew a little bit about how they worked, I got a part-time job working at a garage; this helped tide me over until I could cultivate enough clients to resurrect my business selling pot. I took classes at night in the hope of getting a high school diploma and found companionship in the arms of a girl named Moira, who became my first serious love interest.
Musically, I was a sponge, listening to anything I could get my hands on, trying to learn my favorite licks and mimic my favorite guitar players. During the day I hung out at the beach with my best buddy, Mike Jordan, and some other pasty-skinned friends of Northern European descent, drinking and trying not to fry. At night we wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood, from kegger to kegger, sometimes fighting, but usually just drinking, smoking pot, and laughing at the amateurish bands that passed for “entertainment.”
Even the worst of them, though, managed to tap into something primal and to achieve a minor level of celebrity, with all the attendant perks. I remember hearing about a guy named Pat Knowles, the one guitar player in our neighborhood universally viewed as a badass musician. Then I met him for the first time. What a disappointment! The guy was a skinny little vanillapudding, Peter Pan–looking motherfucker. Just a really soft kid. But Jesus…could he play! And then there was John Tull, who was almost the antithesis of Pat Knowles. John was a big lumberjack kind of guy, with thick arms and a cinder block of a skull. You know how they say the typical adult male has a forehead equal to the width of four fingers? Well, John was definitely a five. Maybe even a six. He had a black Les Paul with three pickups, and he was playing songs like no one I’d ever seen. Not locally, anyway. Good songs, too—songs I listened to on the radio and on my eight track, and as I watched him play, I couldn’t help but be impressed.
Man…this guy is good.
That was only half of it. When the band went on break and John put down his guitar, the chicks were all over him. And bear in mind, Mr. Five-Finger Forehead was not exactly the most handsome guy in the room. But it didn’t matter—it was the guitar and the magic of the music that made John attractive to the opposite sex. I wanted to be like him, and to be like Pat Knowles.
Only better than them.
IT BEGAN AT the age of seventeen, with a kid named Dave Harmon, a drummer from Huntington Beach whose home life seemed to be the exact opposite of mine. Dave came from a stable family, with a mother and father who supported everything he wanted to do, including becoming a musician. They understood that I was basically on my own, and so they took pity on me, opened their home to me, and treated me with kindness and understanding. For me, it was like winning the lottery. I was living on my own, drinking generic beer, eating ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese like they were going out of style. Then I meet this kid with cool parents and a fridge full of food.
Dave and I started talking about playing together and maybe putting together a real band, one that would kick the shit out of anything we’d seen at the neighborhood parties. To play guitar, Dave recruited a friend of his named Rick Solis, who had a beautiful Gibson Flying V. Like me, Rick studied martial arts, so we hit it off right away. Rick was also the first aspiring rocker I’d met who actually looked the part—he was like a cross between Vinnie Vincent and Paul Stanley. This was no accident. Rick was one of those guys with an innate understanding of image—he favored sleeveless shirts, long hair, and a weird assemblage of rock star jewelry. He also had an enormous nose and dark skin, which gave him a really exotic Mediterranean appearance, and was one of the most hirsute guys I’d ever met. He took the good with the bad—the bearskin rug on his chest (hey, in the seventies this was considered the height of virility) and the monobrow that stretched from one side of his head to the other.
Rick was the first guy I met who seemed committed to playing well and to becoming a rock star. We taught each other a bunch of songs, from “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix to most of the Judas Priest catalog to almost anything else that sounded interesting. Like me, Rick was still developing his taste for music. Before long he was behaving in a manner that was profoundly weird and unacceptable, which led not only to his expulsion from the band but, I can only presume, to a premature demise (Rick often drove while fucked-up, and died in a motorcycle accident just a few years later).
With Rick gone, Dave and I went about the business of building a new band. First to join was a guitar player named Tom Quecke, a friend of mine from night school. Tom came from a family with three brothers. The oldest worked for the government in national security; a terrific, great upstanding guy. The middle brother I didn’t hear much about—he was the black sheep of the family. And then there was Tom, who was like a black sheep gone good. Or trying, anyway. Truth be told, he was kind of a mediocre guitar player, but that’s all we really needed, because he only played rhythm; I handled lead.
Next on board was Bob Evans, a bass player who reminded me of that character Junior from the hillbilly TV show Hee Haw. He was heavyset, with short hair and bangs, and he wore overalls all the time. Bobby looked…well, kind of like a simpleton. But he was actually a pretty sharp kid. As was his father, who was an accomplished sound engineer who had built some incredible sound cabinets for his home. These things weren’t just bass cabinets; they were like bass enclosures from Royal Albert Hall or something. We’d go to play with this dude, and I’d have my little cabinets, and Bobby would be firing up these enormous cabinets, stacked eight feet high, and would hit that first bass note—BWOWWWWWW!—and sterilize the neighborhood. Bobby had money and a car, so naturally we were happy to have him in the band.
At that point all we needed was a singer—I hadn’t yet considered the possibility that I might handle the microphone myself—and we found one in Pat Voelkes. Pat was lean and muscular, with long straight hair—he looked like a singer. He was also a couple years older than the rest of us, a little bit more mature, a little smarter about the practical side of putting together a band. We built a rehearsal studio in Pat’s garage and got together as often as possible to practice. But we all had lives on the side. Mine revolved around the trafficking of illicit substances. By this time I’d gravitated from selling pot to selling anything I could get my hands on: hash, LSD, Quaaludes, cocaine. When it came to making money, I was indiscriminate.
I don’t say that with pride. It’s just the way it was. I needed cash, and this was the easiest, most efficient way to raise it. Moreover, you have to consider the cultural and political climate of the times. Chemically speaking, the late 1970s was a pretty liberal time. I didn’t see anything particularly dangerous or immoral about ingesting or distributing drugs. It seemed absolutely normal to me. Given my background and family history, this isn’t exactly a surprise.
We called the band Panic. I don’t even remember why—probably just because it sounded kind of cool, wild and anarchic. Our first performance was in Dana Point, at a party hosted by my cousin John. It was something of a makeshift affair. Dave Harmon was unable to play that night, so we recruited a substitute drummer named Mike Leftwich. We played pretty well, and the crowd loved us. The set list was a random collection of songs I’d heard at various keg parties—Def Leppard, the Scorpions, Judas Priest—along with some more obscure stuff that I liked, such as Budgie and Sammy Hagar (as a solo artist). Everyone had a blast, and by the end