The Concert that Changed Me

Well as it usually happens, it’s 2 in the morning and thanks to YouTube I’m no where near going to bed like I planned to 3 hours ago. What has me enraptured is discovering most of the concert Guns n’ Roses did at The Ritz for Mtv back in 1988. As a kid in the very beginning stages of learning guitar and dreaming about rock stardom I saw this concert and it was THE experience that made me want to play rock and roll in whatever capacity. I was a huge Guns n’ Roses fan, as my folks can attest to, I had the albums, the posters, and I think I personally wore out two copies of Appetite for Destruction from constant playing. I know that album almost as good as I know my own recordings. Watching this concert as a kid, I remember being mesmerized by what I saw. My concept of how a band performed was based on careful study of this show. A few years and a few shows changed my perception a bit on this fact but I still remember the dazzling awe I felt watching it. Every moment rang true with me. The manic delivery of Axl Rose, the full arm swinging drum style of Steven Adler, the punk flavor lent by Duff McKagan, the solid but quiet rhythem guitar of Izzy Stradlin, and of course the half man, half beast reason I took an interest in Les Paul guitars Slash. Now, a couple of decades and a few hundred shows of my own later I watch this concert with a different set of eyes. I a guitar play who is clearly very drunk, a singer near losing his voice, additional vocals added only in the vicinity of being harmonious, the madness at the end of “Paradise City” and the foreshadowing of Axl’s well know “Temper Tantrums” as he throws the Mic at the end of “Rocket Queen”. Still, though, I can remember that kid sitting inches from the TV set in the living room late at night soaking in this experience. The last song (out of synch with the flow of the concert) is the live cover of Dylan’s “Knocking on Heavens Door” heard on the radio which inspired many of my friends to add this song to the various sets we’ve played over the years. I’m not sure how this show will be perceived by some of you but for me and a few friends, the course of our lives might have taken very different paths were it not for these five guys playing this gig that night.

Roots

I was born in 1974 in a small town in mid Michigan. This town was split in half by a set of train tracks. On one side of the tracks was the nicer side of town. Well kept old Victorian houses, the library, and clean streets were common place. The other side of the tracks had a more worn, weathered, and tired look to it. I spent the first 3 years of my life living with my mom and my Aunt Joyce. My mom worked a third shift job at a factory that made wiring harness for General Motors products and my Aunt Joyce babysat me. We lived in a house on a broken brick road next to a factory that had been divided into apartments. We were in the lower right hand furnished apartment (if you were facing the house) that cost $25 a month. My Aunt Joyce received a weekly $20 check from social services for babysitting me, and my mom brought home her paycheck which, after bills, left $75 everything else.

I have included a picture of that house that was taken a couple of years ago. It has been remodeled recently but I remember how it used to look. It was covered with gray asphalt shingles which made it look dirty even on the freshest spring day and it had a front porch on it that sagged like any of the hundreds of tired hobo’s that used to pass through the town riding the rails. Inside the furnace had a crack in the side wide enough to stick your thumb into and when it rained water would run down the light cord and drip of the light bulb in the main room. The house was a couple of hundred feet away from a set of train tracks and when there weren’t trains there were trucks going to the factory to load or unload in addition to the employees changing shifts.

But for all the previous description, I visualize this time with some fondness because I’ve been told stories of good times in that house. It sounded as though everyone living there was interested in each others well being. Plus it was home to the first images I have of the man who married my Mom and adopted me as his son when I was three. I have always referred to this place as “The Broken House” because that was what I called it when I was young. However, I am proud, grateful and lucky to be able to say that, though I started life in a broken house, I never lived in a broken home.