Suck and Blow (27 page)

It was through Amber that I met Kristen. She was another cheerleader and became a friend on whose shoulder I would cry about Amber. We were friends for a year and half and then began a real relationship that lasted a year. That fizzled out because I was gone a lot and because her dad was only four or five years older than me. She was sixteen years younger than me, and I think that messed with her head. That one really broke my heart; it was a tough one.

I think that after Kristen I didn't feel so much like a kid anymore. With Felicia it was more in my head, and with Delana, Kristen, and even Amber, this was me going out in the world and getting my heart broken. When you're fat and you get your heart broken you can say, “Oh that was because I was fat.” When you don't have that excuse anymore it becomes about you. That's something even a fifteen-year-old learns, but for me it was much later. I think I got tougher or at the very least learned that real relationships are harder than a storybook thing. I was thirty-eight years old, and it was weird that it took me so long to realize that. I became more jaded at least in the interest of my own survival.

For the next four years I was doing my best to play the field. I met some interesting women, like Joy. I knew I liked Joy on the first night we met when I fell down a flight of stairs while we were holding hands, and instead of letting go of my hand, she chose to fall down the stairs with me. From that point we cared about each other, although the romantic aspect didn't last very long. She's still a very good friend to this day.

My next real shot at a relationship came in late 2011 with Caitlin. We met after a gig in a Vermont bar, and a few buttery nipple shots later we had a kiss and decided to see where it would lead. We had a good time, but she had her own life in Vermont and couldn't leave, and I just didn't have it in me to move to Vermont—part of that old and jaded thing—but I value that relationship.

About a year after Caitlin and I broke up I would meet Rachel and again try living with someone. She needed a place to stay, so I had her come live with me. She was cool, and it was kind of a light thing, where we had an open arrangement.

It was during this period that I had an incident with a Vegas prostitute that made the news after she roofied me and stole my Rolex. My manager had some party, and I drank way too much whiskey and then went back to my hotel, where I got it in my head that I wanted to go to the bar and get a drink, but I'm not quite sure what really happened next. I remember a young woman coming up to me in the bar; I have some sense of being in an elevator headed up to my room. The next thing I knew I was in my underwear, not having done anything, and my wallet was empty and my watch was gone. I wasn't looking to buy
a prostitute, although my arrangement with Rachel would have allowed it. I eventually pieced together that I must have been roofied. I went to the police but never got my watch back, although it was insured, so that turned out okay.

I have had a few encounters with prostitutes over the years, and they have not gone especially well. The sexiest part of a woman is her enthusiasm, and that's what you lose with a prostitute.

On our very first tour of Europe in 1992, when we pulled into Amsterdam, everybody was talking about how they were going to get one of those women in the windows. In response, I went on and on about how I would never treat a woman that way, that I could never purchase a woman for money, and I ended up being the only one who went—everyone else chickened out.

I wandered over, and on the way I stopped in at one of those coffee shops and had three space cakes. As they were kicking in, I saw this lovely Austrian woman in a window. I lingered too long, and she said, “That'll be 25 guilders if you want to come in.” I thought,
Why not?
and 50 guilders later, I left. From there I went to a live sex show, where I witnessed sights I'd never even imagined, including the longest penis I'd ever seen—it curled around like a monkey's tail.

Then, as I was walking back to where I thought the hotel was located, I noticed the woman in the window I had just been with. So I gave her a casual wave, being very sophisticated, and she stepped out of her window, ran to the door, and informed me that I had left my passport behind and that she'd given it to the police.

She told me how to get to the police station, but I got completely lost until I finally stumbled into one and said to the officer behind the desk, “Excuse me, I hope you'll bear with me because I'm high on one of your many legally obtainable hash cakes, but I was enjoying the company of one of your legally obtainable prostitutes, and she said that I left my passport.” The cop instantly ordered me to get the hell out of his building. That's when I realized that just because these things were legal in Amsterdam, they weren't necessarily socially acceptable to everyone.

The fun part was the next day, when we had a gig at 5 p.m. in Belgium. So first I had to walk back to my hotel, which I kept thinking was right around the corner because I was really high on the legally
obtainable space cakes, but it was actually on the other side of town, so it was a long walk back.

Everything opened at noon and closed at three and was scattered all over town: the US consulate, a passport-worthy photographer, and a police station. I had to go to one place to report the theft, go to the next place and get a form, and then go to the photographer before circling back with the picture. It was very close, but we did make into Belgium in time.

I think I finally realized I'm really not a prostitute guy years ago in LA when I ordered an escort service, and this woman came to the door and asked me, “What turns you on?” I made the classic mistake of saying what nonprostitute people say, what a normal healthy person would say about someone he's having sex with, which is: “What turns me on is really what turns you on.” So oddly I spent $800 talking until 4 a.m., but that's really not why I called her. I just didn't have the nerve to tell her that.

A number of years later I was in Vegas and was single. I had mentioned to one of my managers that I wasn't good at getting prostitutes, so without my knowledge, they tried to help me out. I met this girl who was hanging out, and she seemed to be paying attention to me, so I bought her breakfast. She asked if her friend could come along with us, and I said, “Sure,” and I just hung out with them. The next day the band told me that they had hired her for me, but I just didn't realize it. That was lost on me, and really that's me with a prostitute.

Another time a girl I was dating hired an escort to dance for us in our room. The dancer was not there to sleep with me, but she seemed to like me and took me aside. So I looked back at the girl I was dating, and she said, “Go for it.” I was pretty drunk, so I said, “Ohhh, okay.” It turned out she was just testing me. But, as I later explained to her, I just don't take tests well.

As for the roofie incident in Vegas, shortly after I reported it the story was all over the news. I couldn't quite figure that out until I realized that the first guy I spoke with and said, “Oh yeah, I got roofied” was the person who was the head of the Las Vegas press, and suddenly it was all over the wire. I didn't really mind because it's good to come clean about things like that. What you don't want to do is have a secret life. I think a secret life is much worse.

When Rachel had moved in, to keep things on a pseudo-independent level, we agreed that she would primarily live in the guest house when I was gone. This way she could bring all of her stuff and I didn't have to move any of my stuff.

When I began dating Jordan, who is now my wife and the mother of my daughter, before it got very serious—and it did get serious fast—we felt it only fair to tell Rachel, and that was a painful experience.

At the outset I had promised Rachel that if she moved to Washington, I would guarantee her a place to stay for at least a year. Some people thought my home life was a little strange because Rachel kept living in my guesthouse after we broke up but I stopped charging her rent. She had wanted to pay rent when we were together so she could remain independent, but after we broke up I said, “You just take care of the house and my truck while I'm off on tour or in the recording studio.”

After Rachel found a place to live and met her current boyfriend, the timing seemed to work fairly well for Jordan to come move in with me. I'm still friends with Rachel and wish her well too. I've been pretty happy in that I've been able to remain friends with most of the women I have been serious about. I wish them well (and offer apologies to any who weren't mentioned here).

I do think that these experiences have had a tangible impact on my songwriting. One of the things that I think I can contribute is dealing with how bumpy life is and how hard it can be and then expressing how we find strength from love. I do have some catchy rhymes, but I think that's the meat of it.

I don't think a song can really work when all it does is express how everything in life is just great. The exception, of course, is that song from the
Lego Movie,
and who sings that? Toys sing that.

I think Chris Barron is one of the best songwriters around. He can come up with something catchy and brilliant in the same song. He can write you something about dishwashing detergent that will make you think, and that's kind of fucked up but it's a good thing. His song “How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me?)” is one of the best confessions in rock and roll—to say that for all of my parading and confidence, I'm really expressing this pain that
you rejected me. His favorite line is “Saint Christopher lives on the end of a quill,” and that's a good line. He loves the pretty stuff, but it's the confession that's the thing. All of it builds to where he is forced to say it out loud—“How could you want him when you know you could have me?” The singer still can't believe it. The version they did on the record is pretty good—they added a little more guitar and put thought into it, and it's still a great song—but I'll always prefer the spare confessional that I heard in the take on the demo.

My own earlier stuff was a lot more naïve because my love experiences were from my perceptions of heartbreak—I would hide from that without having tried it. When you're hiding, love can be this very sacred thing. You can build it into this shrine, and it's a very beautiful shrine, but it's not a real answer; it's not a real response. It doesn't love you back. You're just endlessly struggling to express this. There was a naiveté to my earlier stuff that people enjoyed because I was willing to run head on into the fan blades.

But really being in love demands being there when they suck, and contentment is a fleeting emotion between vomit or poop or bad breath. The reality of a relationship is that it is never going to be this Cinderella story because where does that exist other than in a Disney premise?

Disney premises are great. We've all lived for Disney premises, but you have to know the difference. I was so naïve and unpracticed that I couldn't see the difference, and that kept me alone and, therefore, writing more of these songs. I kept making that tradeoff: my solitude is my gift. And that's dumb, something a young guy does.

But if you manage to get in the experience that other people have, which is the experience of life and settling down and having a real love relationship, then whatever observations you make are going to be more real.

To be a songwriter, you have to live in the real world and pony up your naïve enthusiasm. But to hide and then pony up your naïve enthusiasm is kind of cheating; you're not really earning it. If you earn it, I think it'll resonate better.

I think an earned naïve enthusiasm, one that has survived reality, is one that strikes a deeper chord. At least hopefully. I suppose that's my naive enthusiasm talking.

What I have learned for sure through my relationships is that it becomes a problem when people think a song is the definition of a relationship. You have to remember that a song is just a snapshot of a moment you're feeling, that it's not the sum total. A song is like a sitcom with a happy ending that only lasts a half hour.

28

SHOWING MY RANGE

I made VH1's 100 Most Shocking Moments for sitting next to my friend and smoking some weed while he drove my car. People often think that's a gun story, but it really isn't.

Before I explain what happened, though, I will share another gun story that's actually about guns. I'm not so proud of it, but it actually happened and caused Dickey Betts to run away from me, which was a shocking moment in its own right.

When you have friends in your crew rather than professionals, as we did in the early days, you really do whatever you can to motivate them, especially when you're not paying them anything.

There was a point when I happened to be the only sober guy in my band, and I'm including my crew, so I became accustomed to a certain level of physical intimidation to get things going.

We were at a show opening for the Allman Brothers Band in 1992, and I couldn't hear anything again. I figured I had to try something extreme, because in those days I needed to throw a new kind of temper tantrum every day to get my crew's attention; otherwise, they'd just nod and smile and wouldn't do a damn thing. I once threw harps at my monitor guy in order to make my point.

But this time I brought a derringer with me onto the stage. I had taken the bullets out of it, but looking back, this is still something I
regret deeply. As a gun guy, this was the most abhorrent thing I have ever done. I motioned to Grant in my crew to come over, stuck this unloaded derringer in his ribs, and growled, “It's loaded. Give me more fucking monitors or I'll kill you.”

Looking back in amazement, he went and gave me more monitors.

As it happened, Dickey had done something with a live gun a few years earlier. I found out about this because there was this rumbling within the Allman Brothers tour, within his crew—“He did what?!”—and I had to go and apologize to a whole lot of people, and rightly so. I remember telling Dickey Betts, “Did you hear what I did yesterday?” He responded, “I can't talk about it” and ran away.

Grant should have said, “okay” to me and then turned and walked out of the building and maybe called the cops or something. But, amazingly, he gave me more monitors.

These days I consider myself a responsible gun owner and would never pull that kind of stunt. Without acknowledging guilt, let's say it's possible that I once smuggled a gun into Canada, but if so, even that was a relatively minor offense and was overshadowed by a drug bust, which is the exact opposite of what would land me on VH1.

When we opened the stadium dates for the Stones in 1997, the tour included two shows in Canada, which meant a border crossing on September 30. The previous time we had played in Canada, about a year and half earlier, they confiscated my crossbow and gave me a $60 fine.

So this time I (hypothetically) decided I would have my vengeance by smuggling a handgun into Canada. It was barely a gun; it was a pen gun. For about two weeks people were allowed to buy one from American Derringer. It's a single-shot .25 caliber pistol that looks like a tire gauge. You unscrew the barrel and put a round in it, and then you screw the top back on. It's a half-inch barrel and is built for spies; it's supposed to be a last-ditch weapon, but if a spy pulled it out, he'd probably be killed because it's not going to hurt anybody.

So (perhaps) I put the barrel in my shoe and the rest of it in my stuff and smuggled it into Canada. I really just wanted to be able to say I did that (if indeed I did do it, no need to rankle our friends to the north—did I mention that my tour manager was turned away at the border because he failed to acknowledge he had been arrested for setting off
illegal fireworks . . . in the fourth grade!). It was (theoretically) a little secret for myself to say I did something bad, but then lo and behold, a short while later, I discovered that Bobby was busted for cocaine at the Winnipeg airport. Of course the press had a field day because we were opening for the Rolling Stones tour and twenty years earlier the Toronto police found heroin in Keith Richards's hotel room, confiscated his passport, and detained him for over a month. In Bobby's case he eventually pled guilty to possession and received two years of probation. As I told him, though, “Remember, drugs are felonious, guns are not.”

I suppose that point was reinforced in some fashion on March 8, 2007, when I was returning home to Washington from Texas. It was moving day, and I was legally transporting fourteen guns in my car. That's what made the news, and what's funny is that everyone thinks I broke the law because I had guns in my car. When I explain, “No, it was for weed,” they usually respond, “Oh that doesn't really matter.”

My friend was doing 111 miles an hour, and as soon as we saw the cop running to his car, we pulled over. We felt bad because we knew what must have been going through the officer's head when he pulled over the car: “Will I ever see my family again?”

I had the guns, along with a Taser, a switchblade, night-vision goggles, a public address system, and a siren. My car also has a secret compartment, and I had put the weed there. But once you put the weed in the secret compartment that you have constructed, you are officially smuggling drugs. I didn't know that, so they seized the car, and many thousands of dollars later, I got it back.

When they brought me to the station, they wanted to know why I had a police siren. What I told them was “in case of a national disaster because I didn't want to be left behind.” The real answer is if there's an earthquake, people are getting the fuck out of my way. That's why I have a police siren in my car. The night-vision goggles are just cool and happened to be in my car.

But for that I made VH1's 100 Most Shocking Moments. I beat Elvis meeting Nixon—and he was packing two guns in the White House. I beat Leif Garrett running over his friend and crippling him for life. I was just sitting next to my friend in a car, smoking some weed.

The next day I was about to go the airport when I received a call from the ATF. I had a stalker, and she called the ATF after it was
reported that I had been arrested. She told them that she was afraid for her life. So they wanted to come over and see what I was doing. I told the agent I needed to get to the airport but showed them the police reports we had on her—it's always wise to document your stalkings—and they let me go. Funny side note: she ended up stalking the ATF guy for a while.

When I first got into the limo there was a .44 magnum sitting there. Apparently the owner of the limo company wanted to sell it to me because he heard that I liked them. So while I was playing with this cool .44 magnum (it has interchangeable barrels), all over the radio I heard “Our top story: He didn't want to be left behind!” The quote was blaring up and down the dial. After I arrived at the airport my phone rang, and it was Ted Nugent—“It's a travesty, man. They're trying to railroad you.” He invited me down to his machine gun ranch in Texas—I hadn't realized that machine guns are raised on ranches—apparently they milk them or something. But I guarantee you it's free range.

Anyhow, I was at the airport and everyone was looking at me like they caught me masturbating. It's weird being known for something you weren't trying to be known for. The kicker is that when I went through the metal detector, I forgot that I had a metal container full of weed in my coat. But it didn't set the thing off. It was as if God said, “You've had enough, son,” patted me on the head, and sent me on my way. I've always heard the Lord protects the stupid.

Oh yes and the drug charge—it was actually just a misdemeanor for possession—was dismissed after a year passed without an arrest.

I suppose I should acknowledge that I did go to jail once for holding a gun, but it was actually a cap pistol. This was back when I was nineteen and was home from the New School. My friends Dave Wilder and Crugie Riccio who were in the band the Disturbed (not the Chicago heavy metal band, the Princeton punk band) were making an album in Philly, and I had nothing to do, so I went with them in Crugie's van. He had a mohawk and leather jacket, and Dave was a thin little kid with frizzly hair. I, of course, looked like a maniac with my sideburns from that era. Crugie had a cap pistol in his glove compartment, and as we were talking, I'd twirl the cap pistol on my finger. Occasionally I'd point it at Crugie's head and demand that he take me
to Cuba, and over the course of the drive I'd wave it out the window, not thinking because it was a cap pistol. I had long since put it on the dashboard when we hit a pothole, and all of a sudden we see the lights of a police car. We figured he was pulling us over because we had a flat tire, but suddenly three cop cars surrounded us and we heard, “Get out of the car now and go on your knees!” Then I saw the cap pistol on the dashboard and realized what had happened. I forgot I was nineteen and not nine, and the police had received reports that someone was waving a gun out the window. They arrested us for terrorism, and we sat in a jail cell for three hours and then let us go because we had no priors.

I also was arrested once with a wooden samurai sword. Back in high school we broke into the Princeton reunions, which is what you had to do when you were a high school kid because they were all gated off. So one time I was at a friend's house with a practice samurai sword, and I hung onto it when we decided to break into the reunion because I liked the way it felt. So when they caught us for breaking in, I had the fake samurai sword, which in retrospect may not have been the best decision and could have made the situation appear more alarming than it actually was. I eventually explained myself, and there was no major fallout from that incident, but sometimes I just don't know why I do the things I do.

But as for the incident in 2007, what really what came out of it was that people were treated to a photo of my guns lined up on a card table in some conference room. Ever since then, people will sometimes come up to me and ask me how many guns I own. A gentleman never discloses exactly how many weapons he has, but I am certainly aware of the number.

My friends say they never worry about me because I don't have a million rounds of ammunition. I'm not really bunkered in. I think guns fascinate me the way shoes or golf clubs fascinate people who are into shoes or golf clubs.

A really cool gun you can trick out is a 1911, the .45 automatic World Wars I and II sidearm. You can polish the barrel so it cycles better and makes the trigger like butter. It's the same way that somebody cuts an angle on a skateboard's axle if they're into boarding. It's that kind of a hobby to me.

I don't hunt because I go to the supermarket, so I find that hypocritical. As a kid I went with my dad to New York on a pheasant hunt. I shot a pheasant and was so proud that we were going to eat it, like my older brothers did. But my dad was too sleepy to help me clean it, and I ruined the meat. I ruptured the shit sack and then cried because I just murdered a bird.

A few years later my dad took me on a deer hunt. You sit behind a stone wall, freezing, and you're not allowed to shiver because the deer will notice you shivering, and you can't give your position away. Deer in the woods sound like squirrels dropping acorns, and for eight hours there were a shit-ton of squirrels dropping acorns but no deer. I wanted to do two things when I was done: shoot every squirrel I saw and buy a deer, tie it to the ground, and shoot it. I realized that wasn't a good hunter's spirit, so that was when I stopped hunting. But I do respect people who are really into it.

I've let people hunt on my property who feed their family through it. The key to a hunt is that you actually have to use the meat; you can't just kill something for no reason. If you are using the meat, then there's a sacredness to it.

I was talking to Alicia Silverstone and got her to admit that if I harvested an elk in that fashion and substituted it for beef, and used every bone, sinew, and hide, I'd be more humane as a meat eater and as a user of animal products. It is the one way in my heart I would acceptably take an animal. Every knife and gun would have a bone handle and all of the hides and antlers would be used—that's the only way to do it.

But I love weapons of all kinds, including swords, spears, atlatls—any kind of weapon has an aesthetic that is superbly efficient. It has to be because it's designed to take a life as if your life depended on it. So there's a beauty to the curve of a saber, which had to work as well as it could because the other guy was trying to build a saber that was better than yours.

I own a Civil War–era cannon that can shoot cans of dog food a thousand yards. I only have six acres of land, so I haven't fired it since I moved to my current house. You can see my cannon on Google Earth, though. I feel like Fidel Castro: you can see my artillery from space.

It's a rough-barrel cannon so you can't put real munitions in there. The balls would rattle around and explode. It's good for tin cans, though. I could have spent another $15,000 for the rifled barrel that would shoot projectiles a mile away, but I don't need anything shelled that badly. Of course, that would give me a much more active role in the PTA. If you're a member of a local community and you have an artillery, they have to listen to you just a little bit more. It's called gun-boat diplomacy, and it'll work in your neighborhood.

There's something about tracing the evolution of firearms that fascinates me, but I also like to have some form of a modern version. So I have a few assault rifles, and they are the niftiest, coolest weapons that I can get my hands on, with all the doodads and bells and whistles. They're locked up and everything, but they're also ready if shit goes down, although I'm not really planning for shit to go down.

I'd say in an apocalypse I'd last about two weeks because I'm not the healthiest dude in the world and I don't know how far I could run. I suppose my best bet would be to load up my car, drive to a convenience store, take that over, map out the location of the next convenience store, and just convenience store my way to the wilderness. I am basically part of a grid, and eventually someone bigger and tougher would come and take all my guns.