No Regrets (4 page)

If not for music I’m sure I would have become a full-fledged gang member and ended up either dead or in jail. But music pulled me away from that. It literally saved my life. I started playing on weekends, rehearsing at night, and eventually the guys in the Ducky Gang turned their backs on me. Can’t blame them, really. How much rejection can you take?

“Hey, Paul, come on. We’re gonna break into a warehouse tonight.”

“Sorry, man. Can’t make it. Got a gig.”

It was a natural progression, with me going in one direction, and them going in another. I started playing more, even making money from some of my shows, while they became involved in more serious shit and taking heavier drugs. Not that I didn’t want to run with those guys, as well, but… hey, there’s only so many hours in a day. Eventually you have to make a choice.

I chose the guitar.

Or maybe the guitar chose me.

At the age of sixteen I was playing in some decent bands and getting progressively better gigs. At some point along the line I decided that I didn’t want to go to jail. I’d been around enough police stations and holding cells, and I’d met enough guys who had done serious time to know that I probably wouldn’t have done real well in prison. I wasn’t cut out for it. I wanted to play music; I wanted to be a rock star. So when the activities of the Ducky Boys escalated, I pulled back. The early stuff had been fairly benign. I mean, we were hot-wiring cars and going on joyrides, but it wasn’t like we were taking them to chop shops. I was
lucky, too. I never got caught at anything that serious as a kid. I remember one day waking up with a hangover and realizing that I’d dodged a proverbial bullet the night before. I’d stolen a car and driven all over the Bronx before ditching it by the side of the road.

That one would have been costly: drunk driving, grand larceny, speeding, and whatever else they wanted to throw at me.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I wasn’t stupid. I started to see that some of my friends were taking ridiculous chances with their lives. Probably because they didn’t give a shit. They didn’t see anything better down the road. Some of them didn’t care if they lived or died. My friend Walter, for example, went away to juvenile hall when we were in our mid-teens. Shortly after he got out, he stabbed some guy in a bar fight. Did five years for that one in a state penitentiary. One of my closest friends, Tommy McCalden, hung himself at Rikers Island jail when he was eighteen years old. Tommy’s dad had been superintendent of my building when I was growing up, and we were in the Junior Duckies together. We’d drifted apart by the time he died, but I still remember being shaken by the news.

I didn’t want to go down that road. I wanted more out of life.

I
expected
more.

When it came to school, I was always a bit of a square
peg, forever trying (or not trying) to fit in where I knew I didn’t belong. I just couldn’t seem to work up much enthusiasm over academic pursuits. I probably didn’t even belong in a traditional classroom setting. I would have been better off at a school that catered to kids with more creative interests, like art and music. During my school days, there were only a few interesting teachers that got my creative juices flowing, so I spent a lot of time figuring out creative ways to avoid going to school in the first place. As a result, I went to three high schools in four years. Got bounced from the first two, dropped out of the third.

I started out at Our Saviour Lutheran, the next natural stop in the education chain for kids who went to Grace Lutheran Elementary School. But I hated it from the beginning. Within a few weeks I was cutting classes; then I began cutting entire days. Got away with it for a while, too. The trick was that you had to show up for school in the morning, and then you could sneak out. One day, though, I deliberately
missed the bus and went off to hang out with some of my buddies. Unfortunately, I had neglected to tell my brother, Charlie, what I had planned. Charlie was a straight arrow, driven to do well in school, and, like a lot of older siblings, prone to worrying about his little brother. So when he got to lunch that day and couldn’t find me, he became really nervous. It wasn’t like he was trying to get me in trouble; he was legitimately concerned that something bad had happened to me. So he went to the principal’s office and told them that I wasn’t sick, and asked them to find me.

Which they did.

By the end of the day I was sitting in the principal’s office with my mother, enduring a verbal reprimand.

“You know, Paul,” the principal said, “you have to take your high school years more seriously if you want to make something of your life.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gave me a stern look.

“If this sort of behavior continues, we’ll have to let you go.”

Let you go…

It sounded less like a threat than a reward.

Needless to say, it did continue, and they did let me go.

I didn’t care. I hated Our Saviour Lutheran. I had to take two different buses to get there, couldn’t stand the uniforms, and found myself drowning in discipline the moment I arrived each morning. By the time I was a freshman in high school I’d had my fill of parochial education. For some reason I had this idea that if I could just transfer to the public high school in my neighborhood, DeWitt Clinton, everything would be better. So that’s what I did.

The culture shock was immediate and overwhelming. I had no clue as to how public schools worked. For nine years I’d attended nothing but parochial schools, and while I found them to be generally stifling and unsupportive, there was a certain level of comfort that comes with familiarity. Both Grace Lutheran School and Our Saviour Lutheran High School were small and intimate; you couldn’t help but know almost everyone in your grade, as well as most of the faculty.

DeWitt Clinton?

This place was like a fucking metropolis by comparison. With a student body of more than four thousand, including every high school stereotype you can imagine, it was a monument to Darwinism. You figured out a way to fit in and survive, or you were chewed up and spit out. Fortunately, I already had a few friends at Clinton, which helped ease the transition. Clinton was also where I started hanging out more with musicians than with gang members. But I split time between the two factions for a while. Sometimes I think I would have made a good diplomat; I’ve always been pretty good at finessing situations, of playing the role of peacemaker rather than instigator (this was true even many years later, in KISS). I could handle myself in a fight, but I rarely went looking for a confrontation. I preferred the path of least resistance.

More than anything else, I wanted to have a good time.

Just as they had at Our Saviour Lutheran, classes at DeWitt Clinton had a way of interfering with my prime directive, and before long I was on a first-name basis with everyone in the principal’s office. One day I decided to cut school. In itself, this was nothing out of the ordinary; I did it all the time. Usually I’d just hang out with friends, smoke some pot, have a few beers, play my guitar. Harmless, lazy, aimless shit.

On this particular day, however, there was a purpose attached to my truancy. I don’t remember the precise date, but it was somewhere between March 25 and April 2, 1967. During that week the legendary New York disc jockey Murray the K promoted a series of daylong concerts at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in Manhattan. “Murray the K Presents Music in the 5th Dimension” (that a radio personality received top billing gives you an idea of just how much power Murray the K wielded in those days) was a breathtaking collection of talent and diverse musical styles. Headlining the event, if the posters were to be believed, were Mitch Ryder and Wilson Pickett. These were the biggest draws: Ryder, newly solo and playing without the Detroit Wheels; and Pickett, one of the all-time great soul singers.

And that was just the beginning.

If you look at that poster now, it reads like a Who’s Who of rock
’n’ roll greats: Simon & Garfunkel, the Young Rascals, Phil Ochs, the Blues Project (featuring Al Kooper), and the two bands I most wanted to see: the Who and the Cream. (Yeah, that’s right, “the Cream.” That’s the way they were advertised.)

For a week straight these guys tore up the RKO, turning a midtown movie theater into a showcase for some of the greatest musicians in rock ’n’ roll history. I had to be part of it. Since shows started at 10 A.M. and ran pretty much all afternoon, school was out of the question.

That show was a life-changer for me. I was a month shy of my sixteenth birthday and in the early stages of trying to form some sort of artistic identity. I loved messing around with the guitar, and I’d played in bands with my brother and some friends. On some level I knew that I wanted to be a professional musician, but it wasn’t until that day, sitting near the front of the RKO Theatre, that it all became clear to me.

I wanted to be Pete Townshend.

I wanted to be Eric Clapton.

I wanted to be a guitar-slinging rock star.

Neither Cream nor the Who had ever performed in the United States prior to the Murray the K shows; in retrospect, it was an historic event. Not that I realized it at the time. To me it was just one hell of a show. I don’t recall exactly how it happened, but at some point I wound up near the stage with a few of my buddies early in the day, talking with Murray the K himself. I just walked up to him and began chatting about the show. Everyone knew Mitch Ryder at the time, but Murray was more interested in talking about the Who and Cream.

“These guys are gonna be huge,” Murray assured us. “Wait and see.”

The Who had already released a couple of albums, including
My Generation,
but they were still primarily a British phenomenon; same thing with Cream, a power trio with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker. I was familiar with both bands, but I had no idea what I was in for that day. Watching Clapton handle the guitar so fluidly and effortlessly was mesmerizing. But what really got my attention was seeing the Who and the way they combined theatrics with incredible
music and harmonies. Keith Moon fucking attacked the drum kit. And Townshend blew me away with his powerful chord work and showmanship. I was spellbound as they destroyed their instruments and left the smoke-filled stage in ruins!

It was raw, violent, and entertaining as hell.

These guys knew how to play and sing, and they knew how to put on a show.

I sat there (actually, I’m sure I was standing) in awe of the whole experience. I’d seen a lot of live music by this time, but not by any bands of this caliber. This was big-time rock ’n’ roll, and I wanted to be part of it. I wanted the whole deal: the giant amps, the special effects, the chicks screaming my name from the front row. But the funny thing is, I don’t recall feeling overwhelmed by it. I don’t think I ever felt like it was beyond my reach, or that I was dreaming too big. Sure, I idolized other musicians along the way, and I probably would have been too tongue-tied to speak with Pete Townshend if I’d had the opportunity that day in New York. But even then there was a little voice in the back of my head saying, “You can do this. You will do this.”

I never set my sights low. I’ve always believed most people are ruined by the limitations they put on themselves. I was never afraid to take that step, to see what I was capable of doing. Does luck play a role in success, particularly in a creative field? Sure it does. But if you don’t have the balls to give it a shot, you’re destined to fail.

Clapton?

Townshend?

Those guys had talent. They also had balls.

And though he wasn’t nearly as well-known, so did Jim McCarty, the lead guitarist for Mitch Ryder’s band. Funny the way things come full circle sometimes. That show served as my introduction to big-time professional rock ’n’ roll, and it made an indelible impression. A few years later, when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I ended up jamming with McCarty at a mutual friend’s house in the Bronx. Jim was in town, visiting our buddy, and they invited me over. Music was like that in the
late 1960s, early ’70s. Paths crossed in the weirdest ways. There were so many people starting bands and playing gigs all over the country. It was a brotherhood.

Years later (decades, actually), when I was out on the road with my solo project, Frehley’s Comet, Jim McCarty’s band was my opening act. We’d sit around backstage afterward, tossing down beers and swapping stories. I always thought Jim was one of the most underrated American guitar players, and to be sharing a stage with him after all those years was a real trip.

You just never know how things are going to turn out.

Far as I could tell, there was no three-strike rule at
DeWitt Clinton High School. By the middle of my junior year I’d already been caught skipping on multiple occasions and been suspended two or three times. What can I tell you? I was an incorrigible kid. And they were turbulent times. The Vietnam War was raging, and the music scene was changing rapidly. I’m lucky that I didn’t get in a lot more trouble than I did. I wasn’t a criminal, though; I was just a gigantic pain in the ass to some… albeit with a sense of style. See, by the time I was sixteen, I’d traded in my leather jacket and jeans for knee-high boots and ruffled shirts, like the guys in the Kinks or Paul Revere and the Raiders. I posed like a rock star and carried myself like a rock star, even though I hadn’t yet realized the work that was involved in actually becoming a rock star.