Kilo's Sacrifice

Kilo was an incredible animal. A golden Collie-Shepherd mix, that I had gotten when he was six weeks old. He was exceptionally intelligent. He had been with me during my psychedelic years, he went to the War protests with me, the festivals, the gigs, the tours...he was in Chicago and Detroit with me, in fact, we were pretty much inseperable. I could look at him and know what he was feeling or wanted, and he could do the same with me. As crazy as it sounds, I think that during the years I was doing the psychedelics, we got to a place that was very intuitive and empathetic, almost telepathic, and we loved each other unconditionally. He had become more than a dog to me...he had become a best friend. I remember he always "sang" along with the synthesizer part of Emerson,Lake,and Palmer's Lucky Man...every single time he heard it. To this day, every time I hear the song...I think of him. After the intervention had failed, he became, in many ways, my only friend, at least the only one that wanted to be around me. But I was in the throes of active heroin addiction. I didn't have the time or the energy to take long walks with him, play with him, talk with him...I became what all heroin addicts become...selfish and self-obsessed. And I was emotionally absent. One morning, I woke up after crashing at a customer's house...Kilo was asleep at the foot of the bed. He woke up, jumped into the bed with me, sat on my chest, looked straight into my eyes, gave me a couple of licks...howled one long, pitiful wail, and died in my arms. He was four years old. To this day, I have never felt such profound anguish. I knew he couldn't stand seeing me destroy myself. He couldn't take the change in me... it was more than he could live with, and in the only way he knew how, he begged me to stop what I was doing to myself. He died of a broken heart... I cried hysterically for two days. The grief from the murder that I hadn't allowed myself to feel came out of me, too. And I realized I had just lost a huge part of myself. I was totally devastated. But I swore I wouldn't let him die in vain. The next day, I drove to Hartford to sign up for a Methadone detox program. They told me there was a one week waiting list...but I knew I had hit a bottom...and it was time to ask for help....

Misunderstood and Alone

After the intervention failed, I really couldn't say that my friends and family didn't care about what happened to me. They tried the best way they could to deal with a problem they had no experience with. They did manage to get me to stop using heroin for 18 days. But without the dope, all the pain I was using drugs to relieve came back with a vengence. Add to that, the new pain of withdrawal, which even I had no experience with, and I just plain hurt... spiritually, emotionally, and now physically, too. Of course I ended up seeking relief from that, the only way I knew would really work. Once I made the decision to get high again, any sympathy or understanding for me pretty much ended, because all anybody saw...was me making the choice to use. Since a year had gone by since the murders, most people thought I had "gotten over it", and so nobody even considered that without a lot of professional help, nothing was going to change. And that included me. I had no idea how to heal from these wounds...so I did the best I could to conceal the wounds...I wanted people to think I was strong...that I was OK. So I didn't seek counseling, or therapy...I didn't know what they were...and I didn't know they could help me. I didn't think anything could help the reasons why I hurt. But I knew what took away the pain...at least enough for me to be OK. So to be OK, I had to use. There was no choice about it, at least, not in my mind. And once I did that, I cut myself off from all the people who knew me or cared about me, and that forced me to live and hang out with people who only cared about...the next high. So it seemed as if the last and only friend I had left  in the world at that time was my dog Kilo. He was an amazing animal; very smart, very loyal, and he was even protection for me when I was on the street, too. He loved me no matter what I did...and although at that time I couldn't possibly know it...I was about to lose him, too.

The Intervention

One day, I walked into the club, and the owners and the staff met me at the door, and told me that I couldn't come into the club anymore. The weren't having a junkie in their inner circle. I guess they just didn't have any experience with the whole heroin thing, and didn't know what else to do. I also knew a lot of well known bands that came through the club, and a lot of drug business that happened there as a result, and who was doing it...and in their minds, I had become a danger and a threat, especially with what I knew...and because of their belief that a junkie always makes deals with the police, if  busted. I was crushed. It was apparent that my trauma over the murders had been totally  forgotten...or never even considered. This was my family, and my only friends...and I felt completely abandoned. They knew me (or I thought they did)...well enough to know that I would never have sold any of them out. I know they were scared...for me and for themselves...but it didn't change the fact that the only place left for me now was on the street, with other street junkies...there was nobody else that would have anything to do with me. I lived on the streets and hung out in any place I could...constantly dope-sick, and desperate. I lived like that for about two months, and it was one of the darkest periods of my life. One day, I was picked up by a friend, while walking down the street, and was driven to a house about ten miles out of town. I was then told that every one of my old friends had decided that they had to take action, so they were locking me in a house, under 24 hour a day guard...(they all took turns being "on duty") and they were going to force me to get clean... cold turkey. For the next 18 days, I shook, shivered, sweated, tossed and turned, cried, and literally went in and out of consciousness, while the 'guards' sat in the next room, smoking up hundreds of dollars worth of my best pot, and had themselves a three week party. I can only remember a couple of times when anyone even came in to check on me, and that was usually a quick look in, and then they'd go back to the party. After 18 days, I was awake, and because I seemed OK to them, they finally let me leave. All I knew was...that I hadn't slept in nearly three weeks...so as soon as I was out of there, and got back to my car...I immediately scored some dope...and finally, finally...I was able to get to sleep.

Going, Going...Gone

I remember very little about the next two years, although a few things stick out. One thing that I do remember is.. that I felt much more alone, unhappy, and more completely lost than I had ever felt. I was trying to hide what I was doing from the people I was closest to, and although I still had some contact with them, and they knew something was different about me...they didn't know what it was...or why it was happening. I think they probably thought I was just still messed up from the murders, but nobody really wanted to know that either...and I don't think they ever even considered heroin as the culprit. And of course, the murders had something to do with all of it. I can't say if I would or would not have used heroin, had the murders never occurred...but it sure felt like that was when all the intolerable pain had started. In my group of friends, and in my family, I was the first person to have had a problem with heroin, and I guess nobody knew what they were seeing, or what to look for. I didn't want them to know, anyway... because I couldn't even explain it to myself. So I isolated myself from them...and pretty much everyone. And an addict alone is in bad company. I buried myself in my using. I don't remember thinking about my music, my career, or anything relating to bands at all, during those two years...and for that to have been true, I can honestly say that I had to have been totally gone...just not there. And things just got worse. My main New York connection had cut me off, because I was screwing up in business, too. And that forced me onto the streets in my hometown, a very small town, but a major heroin distribution outlet...exposing what I was doing to all who knew me, as well as to the police. I still believed that the police would eventually arrest me for the murders, but they were waiting for me to destroy my own credibility...by letting the dope do its work...and then they'd be able to bust me for drugs first...and then the murders next. I lived in a constant state of fear, waiting to make a mistake that would open that door for them. As the truth became obvious to my friends and family, it also became obvious to my customers and connections, and many of them stopped doing business with me, because my problems were now putting them at risk...the ultimate irony. Suddenly, I had a $1500.00 a week drug habit, and now, no business to support it. And it was becoming very obvious...that something had to give.

Going Down Fast

I remember thinking after I had been shooting heroin for about seven or eight weeks, that I'd better stop, because I didn't want to get hooked. I couldn't see that it had already taken over. With all the other drugs I had ever used, there was never  physical withdrawal symptoms that I could identify. But all the stuff I had ever heard about heroin, led me to believe that this drug was different. So one day, I packed my van with a tent, a sleeping bag, and my dog, and left for a weekend camping trip in Vermont. I needed to take a break. It was summer, and Vermont was beautiful. I pulled up off the highway and trekked about 1/4 mile into the woods, along a river, and set up camp. That night it rained very hard, and the whole next day and night, too. I kept waiting to experience the nausea and vomiting I had always seen junkies going through in the movies when they tried to "kick". All I felt was cold and damp, and very bored. After two days, I had enough, and so I broke camp, and drove home. The whole ride, all I kept thinking was.."I can't believe it, they lied about heroin, too". That sixties mentality again, telling me that nothing I had been told about drugs was true...after using the kind of high grade heroin I had been using for over twelve weeks, I thought surely, I should have had a habit. But all I felt was... that I had wasted a perfectly good weekend out in the woods, getting wet, and catching a cold. I had no experience with heroin withdrawal then, and today, I think that "cold" was probably the early stages of acute withdrawal, but I didn't know it. When I got back to Connecticut, I got high. And the "cold" that I had picked up was quickly forgotten, along with any fear I might have had of addiction or withdrawal. I never worried  about a habit again during the next two years. I thought heroin addiction was just another lie, and I had "proven" it to myself...

"The Needle and the Damage Done"

I had been using heroin for about four weeks at that time, sniffing it, when I began shooting the drug intravenously. The few people in my life who had ever used that drug were becoming my new best friends. They initially respected my fear of needles, and sniffed it with me, but it didn't take long for them to tell me that they thought sniffing it was a waste of good dope, and that the only way to fully appreciate the drug was by shooting it. If I had been in my right mind, I would have told them that I wasn't interested...but I wasn't in my right mind...and just as I had lost my fear of heroin, I began to be curious about the needle. So one day, I decided to let one of them "shoot me up", since I was clueless about how to do that. The guy who did that my first time, was very good with needles, and there was none of the pain I had always associated with needles, from childhood visits to the doctor for shots. And the high from the drug when it was injected, rather than snorted, was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was as addictive as sex. I immediately lost all fear of the needle. I had this guy teach me what I needed to know, so I could do it myself, and once I knew how to,  my world instantly shrunk to my house... my "safe place" to do that, and if necessary, because of occasional guests I had, I'd just retreat to the bathroom in my house. I spent a lot of time in there. I discovered I liked shooting cocaine too, although that was scarier, because the rush was a lot more intense. Sometimes, I would spend hours just doing one shot after another. I often forgot about anything else I cared about, or places I was supposed to be. I was totally out of control, and I didn't care. The only thing I found myself willing to do was to go out to take care of whatever business I had to, to make the money I needed to get more. On the trips to New York, I'd plan stops at Rest Areas, so that I could get off...because waiting the two and a half hours it took to drive to the city and the safety of one of those lofts, before doing that, was beyond my ability. Sometimes I would stay in one of those lofts for weeks, without checking in with friends or family back in Conn. And when I finally did call ... I found that friends and family there were ready to call in the police to look for me because I had been completely out of touch for so long...and because it was so out of character for me. They thought something bad had happened to me. And something bad had happened to me, and continued to keep happening to me...but I just couldn't see it.

"Abandon Ye All Hope"....

In the choaotic confusion and haze of pain I was reeling from, I wasn't thinking rationally anymore. After going from being a very successful 21 year old musician with unlimited possibilities, and a very high approval rating from almost everyone I knew...to a 21 year old musician who was considered a possible multiple personality psychotic killer, suspected of having committed two murders, including matricide, and who couldn't even keep a local band together anymore...and who many people were now afraid of...I guess that is just the only explanation I can come up with to explain my choices. I went from a person with a very healthy fear and respect for the destructive power of heroin...to a person who fifteen minutes after making a very poor choice, and deciding to try it...became totally blind to that danger, and was willing to be seduced by it, and embrace it like a best friend. I know that I have the disease of addiction...and addicts do not have "stop" buttons, like most people. One is too many, and a thousand is never enough for us. But with everything that was happening in my life, combined with that condition, I really didn't have a chance. Add the granddaddy of all narcotics to that already stacked deck...which just further distorted my thinking...and all I saw it as...was blessed relief. What I didn't see was the truth. For the next 25 years, many of my decisions were poor, and were made by the drugs, and my diseased perceptions. I did have some exceptions to that rule...moments of temporary sanity and clarity, and some very good things came into my life as a result of those exceptions, but ultimately, even those things were destroyed by the consequenses that resulted from my disease of addiction, and my inability to stop using drugs...as I tried to get relief from the pain. Pain seemed like the only constant in my life. I had been in so much pain for so much longer than I had ever imagined possible...from events I didn't think I could ever fix...that I just didn't think I could really treat the causes, and so I treated the unending pain instead, medicating myself in whatever way was necessary to feel OK. The causes of that pain... the unaddressed grief, the frustration, the guilt and the worsening self-doubt, and the rage that they fueled in me... just grew. And I was about to make another incredibly bad choice, and do something I had sworn I'd never do, and once I did, my descent into Hell was complete.

A Clarification

I need to say this before going any further...that writing about this stuff is difficult and still uncomfortable. This  journal is an exercise in self-acceptance. I have no desire to glorify my actions or my drug use. These are just the facts of my life, as I remember them today. I am not proud of a lot of this stuff. I am also not ashamed of it, either. I did the best I could, with the life skills, abilities, and perceptions I had at the time, to get through events that I wouldn't wish on anybody. The journey was crazy at times. If it is uncomfortable to read, then think about how much more uncomfortable it was to live. As the story approaches the present, more will be revealed that I hope will show that the drug stuff was just a wrong turn I made, and that after I made it, I got lost.. and couldn't find my way back. It was the means I used to survive until I could get back. By using drugs to relieve the pain I was in, I never realized that I was only treating the symptom of pain, and not the real causes of my pain, and my avoidance of the core issues just allowed those issues to get worse. For me, using drugs was like putting a band-aid on an bleeding artery..eventually it stopped working. I had to face all the feelings and pain I ran from, to get any real peace. I have the disease of addiction..a condition of the mind and spirit that causes me to live "habitually", and have a generally negative outlook, low self-esteem, self-doubt, self-pity, judgemental attitudes, paranoia, and a knack for believing the faulty data those feelings create in my brain... and acting out on that faulty data as if it were true. And that can be very self-destructive, because that mindset...exaggerated by drugs...becomes "screw it all". Just for today, through the miracle of recovery, and the grace of a Higher Power, most of those symptoms are in remission, and my life is good today, and filled with many blessings, beginning with..I'm still breathing. I'm still a creature of habit, I just work very hard to develop new and positive habits, to replace the old and destructive ones. I'm not hopeless today. By reading this, maybe someone else trapped in that nightmare, will get the hope and courage they need to seek help, and attempt to change. 

A Murder Suspect....Again

I guess I have to go backwards here. There was one last series of events which also had a lot to do with my pain, my rage, and the relief heroin gave me from it. After coming back from Detroit, and while I was rehearsing the new band, I was visiting with Carol, who I had broken up with a few months earlier, but who was still someone I cared about. She had knocked on my door, a few days earlier, and informed me that she was pregnant...and that I was the father...and she just wanted to inform me that she was going to have the baby. I was very upset with her. She had gotten pregnant three other times during the two-year period I had been involved with her. She had already had three abortions. And she worked full-time at Planned Parenthood, advising people for eight hours a day on how to avoid pregnancy. In the last ten months I had been with her, we had only slept together twice, because I didn't trust her anymore. The last time had been two months before we had broken up, and now two months after the breakup, she was back...with yet another "accidental" pregnancy. I had thought our relationship was long over...and now she dropped this new bomb on me.  I just didn't believe I was the father, this time. I was sure she was trying to trap me into a marriage I was unequipped for, and wasn't interested in. So I was in her apartment one day, talking with her, trying to get her to see the senslessness of her choice to have the baby...when there was a knock at the door. It was the State Police. They were looking for me. They asked if I would be willing to talk with them at the Barracks. I thought they had found my Mom's killer, so I left with them. When we got there, they sat me down and told me they were talking to me there because they had some bad news, and they didn't want Carol to hear it that way. I was then told that her brother, the nasty guy I had told the cops about when I had been "cleared" in my Mom's death, had just been found dead, on the West Coast...shot ten times. He had been dead for about two weeks before being found. They wanted to know where I had been at that time. I told them I had been here, rehearsing my band and asked why. They told me that they believed there were two possibilities. Either I had decided to seek revenge on this guy for killing my Mom and had him killed, or more likely, that we had been doing a heroin deal back in June that my Mom had accidentally walked in on, and to silence her, we had both killed her, and since this guy was the only other person who knew the "truth", I had to "tie up all the loose ends" by having him killed. At this time...and when my Mom was killed, too...I had never even tried heroin yet.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. All the alibi witnesses, the polygrapgh results, all of it meant nothing. I was still a suspect in my Mom's death, and now I was the prime suspect in another one too. So now, they thought I was a serial killer. I was furious. I told them that they watched too much TV. I told them that if they were going to try to hang me for something I hadn't done, I wasn't going to help them do it. And I got up and walked out. But it felt like I was the star of a Hitchcock movie...and the pain was very fresh, and unbearable. Add to that the imminent demise of the new band, and the new problem of feeling manipulated into imminent fatherhood...and you have agony, confusion, and chaos...

The "60's Mentality" and Faulty Perception

Although I couldn't see it, I was making some very poor choices. My own strict rules were changing...My early drug experiences had been very powerful, very positive, and very life-changing. I learned how to play guitar, literally overnight, on an acid trip. In six weeks time I was playing better than the guitarist in my band at that time, who had been playing for most of his life, and was a guitar teacher. Most of my values and beliefs..not my parents'..not society's, but mine...had been formed by Woodstock Nation, the Counterculture, the music I listened to, and my hippie friends...and my own life experience. The "proof" that we were on the right path was clear..we had brought an end to the Vietnam War, we had exposed Nixon for what he was, and Civil rights...racial and gender equality...was finally a priority. I had a deep belief that there was a lot in America that needed to change. I still do. One of those things is misinformation and propoganda. When smoking pot became the thing, the government had countered with the "Reefer Madness" mentality, saying if you smoked the "devil weed" you would want to rape and kill. It didn't take too many joints for me to realize that was bullshit. Then they said that psychedelic drugs would cause brain damage and birth defects, but for me, they were a Spiritual and musical awakening. And a few years later, they even said that Cocaine was not addictive, and although at the time, I thought they were finally getting honest about drugs...I found out the hard way, years later, that wasn't true either. It got to the point that whatever I heard about drugs from the "establishment", I immediately believed the opposite was true. There was only one problem... they weren't lying about heroin. But, of course, I didn't find that out until it was too late... 

The "Social" Politics of Heroin

I couldn't believe how much better I felt. It was like the weight of the entire world had been lifted off my shoulders. But I also knew that using heroin was going to be frowned on by many of my friends and business associates. So I decided to keep my using of that drug a secret from many of them. After all, they hadn't been through what I had; they weren't suffering like I was, so they had no right to pass judgment, anyway. The few people in my circle who knew... were people who had either tried the drug, or liked to use it occasionally. And so those people became closer to me, and the others were kept at more of a distance than they had been in the past. Of course, since many people who had been close to me didn't know the real reason why they were suddenly were being kept at a distance, many mistook my change as arrogance and an elitist attitude, and people who had been close to me for years, felt like it was directed at them. That just made me feel even more misunderstood. My circle of friends was shrinking, and I was becoming more isolated from the world, and from reality, and I didn't see it. Heroin had immediately become my drug of first choice, and although I still used and enjoyed coke and pot regularly too, some of that was often part of maintaining my business, and keeping up appearances. One decision I made right away. With the exception of the very few people I was using heroin around, I refused to have anything to do with selling it. That probably kept me out of jail for a lot longer than if I had sold it. My New York City connections became a blessing, and a curse. On the one hand, I could buy heroin in an area very far away from where I lived, which made it easy for me to conceal my using from friends, family, and police. On the other hand, because I was involved with smugglers in the city, I was getting very high grade product, often right off the boats. Heroin from Thailand and China was some of the first stuff I bought. Little pink rocks. With the Chinese writing and the little elephants right on the packaging. And it didn't take me long to discover something else I had always said I'd never use...the needle...and once that happened...everything changed very quickly.

The Gates of Hell

I went back to the only other thing I knew how to do well. There was one problem this time. I did it just to do it. Dealing for dealing's sake. Not for a band. Not for a new album. I did it just to do it. I think I needed to feel like I was still good at something. I started making trips into New York City, dealing with people who were not musicians but smugglers. Moving 40 lbs. of pot in a few hours wasn't uncommon. I  had access to a couple of lofts in the city, lent to me by business associates, where I could stay for weeks at a time. I loved the city. There was always a great band to see, a great restaurant to eat in at 3:00AM, it was very fast, and it was non-stop. And there was always something coming in that I could bring back to Conn. to sell...or something from Conn. that I could always find buyers for in Manhattan, and the money was everywhere. One day, I left Conn. with a friend, for the city.. with 35 lbs. of very high quality Venezualan pot. The buyer was my friend's contact. The business went down very smoothly, and three hours later, we had $3500.00  in profits to split. And a valuable new customer. We were all sitting around the apartment, afterwards, and our host passed around a couple of mirrors with lines of powder on them. We did some coke, which was very good, and then when the second mirror got to me, my host looked at us and said "would you like some dougee?"...I didn't know what that meant, so my buddy pulled me aside and explained that they were lines of heroin to snort. I had always been down on that stuff, and would never have gone looking for it. The stuff scared me. But my friend, looked at me and said.."it's no big deal Mike, I've done it...and let's not blow things with this guy." I thought of how much money we had just made, and how I wanted to be able to do it again in the future, so to avoid offending this guy, I took the mirror from him and said "sure, why not"... and did a couple of lines. With that one act, I opened up The Gates of Hell. Fifteen minutes after snorting the heroin, I realized that for the first time since my Mom's murder, I felt as good as I had always felt before the murder. There was no pain, no anger, no rage..just relief; and I didn't care if it was Drano..I was getting more of this. I bought a few grams before I left the guy's apartment, and thought as I headed back home, that I had never felt better....

Dazed and Confused

I was pretty beaten down. This had been a really good band, put together from scratch in a matter of a only six months, and only with very hard work. We thought my brother was with us, and so the feelings of frustration, humiliation, and betrayal were powerful. I was really pissed. And so were the guys. Because we had done quite a few gigs with my brother in the first few months after we had started to play out in live performances...audiences identified  him as being a big part of the band, after all... that is exactly how we planned it. But now, we couldn't count on him to show up, so we all decided that we'd be better off trying to go on without him. The problem was that even though we had two other lead vocalists and a third, competent, background vocalist in the band, our styles as singers didn't sound the way everyone remembered, and expected. We thought it was different, and so did the audiences and the club owners. Just one person leaving the band changed the entire dynamic.There are a lot of examples of this... The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, are all bands who broke up or struggled, after losing one key member. It just wasn't the same without that missing piece. That "magic" is elusive, and rare.

 It was also very depressing to have to struggle with a unusually fast rise turning into an equally fast demise. We tried to go on, but we knew that we had lost something special, and once we had a taste of it, it was hard to pretend it really didn't matter that it was gone. After a few months of struggling to get work...we gave it up. For me, it was like someone pulled the rug out from under me, and that someone was my twin brother. I thought that, as a club owner, he should have known better than anyone, how totally unprofessional it is to not show up for a contracted job, and how club owners never forget. And how they talk to each other. So the "bad press" preceded us into rooms we hadn't even played in, and as a result, we never would. I took it very personally. The damage done to me, and the rest of the guys, felt like something that I had to take responsibility for, because it was caused by my brother, and I just couldn't believe he had done it. It dawned on me, that for the first time in my career, I had absolutely no ideas or direction. I felt dazed and confused, and my anger was becoming rage...

MIA...with a sold out crowd.

Getting together to rehearse the band with my brother actually there, was like trying to get a wild horse into a burning barn. He only came kicking and screaming. My brother has always hated rehearsal. I think it came from the early days when we were first starting out with bands, and he would have to sit around, sometimes for hours, waiting for the "players" to figure out their parts. And back then, I understood it. But this band was different. By the time he would be asked to come to a rehearsal, everything was done, just waiting for him to show up, so that he could sing a song once or twice for his benefit, not ours (our stuff was tight), and so we would all know what would be happening when we'd hit the stage. He would show up, sing a song, throw the microphone down, and say "this isn't right...fix it"...and storm out, without telling us what he didn't like, or how he'd like to see it change. That was a problem for us, because we didn't think there was any problem, and to start chopping up these arrangements by guessing about what he did or didn't like, made no sense. But we did the best we could to do that anyway, because we had built the entire show around him. After we had played out for a few months, and drew large crowds and started making some good money, he calmed down a bit, but I knew that he wasn't really happy with it. We had one venue that we consistently sold out and therefore played regularly, and this club bent over backwards to keep us happy. As New Year's Eve 1974/1975 approached, we were asked to play there, and the money was to be our biggest payday ever as a band. So, of course we agreed to play the gig. On New Year's Eve that year, the most important night of the year for musicians and clubs, we drew a sold out crowd. And they were all there to hear and see us. And when it was time to play, my brother was no where to be found. He never even showed up. It seemed he preferred the idea of hanging around his own nightclub that New Year's Eve a lot more, with James Montgomery playing there that night...even though he knew what that would mean for us. That night, our show did not go on...and that is a death notice for any band. And eventually, we made it official...and I was starting to get accustomed to failure. And it didn't feel very good.

Don't work with your family

There's an old saying..."family shouldn't work for family". I have had to come to the realization that in my life, family shouldn't work "with" family, either. This  band was the first time I really noticed how family dynamics can get in the way of, or even destroy, something really good. But I refused to believe it. I have always believed that family should support each other and help each other. And I have always tried to do that. Although this was the first time I experienced evidence that it doesn't always work out that way, it would not be the last, because I guess I just didn't want it to be so. Although I have some thoughts about  why the dynamic between my twin brother and myself has been very difficult, and at times very destructive, I must say that I never felt I initiated it. I have always been supportive of him. And beyond that, to guess why it has, and continues to be at times, very toxic, and very destructive would be speculation on my part. Suffice it to say that being twins is a unique experience, and can be very difficult. And I always try to remember that our entire family was wounded by my Mom's murder, and the family has never healed, at least it has never felt like the way it did before my Mom's death. After this band, there were other bands that I put great faith and work into, and I would ask my twin brother to get involved with...either as a performer, or in a business capacity...and to consider us as allies and partners...and each time I did that, and I thought he would remember we were brothers, and put that family bond ahead of sibling rivalry, I was painfully disappointed. What caused that rivalry you will have to ask him about, because I don't have an answer. I have never felt like we were rivals, only brothers. But that doesn't change the fact that the pattern of destructive rivalry first showed up here, with this band, and it would show up again and again and again. I should have learned. Screw me once..shame on you, screw me twice...shame on me. But some lessons are harder to learn than others...and I guess this was one of them.

Back on the Stage

Being able to create music was the only thing that was still nourishing my soul. The long-postponed band project, interupted by the murder of my Mom was finally happening. And it was a very good band. More importantly, it was a very close band, exactly the opposite of what I had just experienced in Detroit, and exactly what I needed to regain my lost confidence. All the guys in it were friends. I have a twin brother, who is nine minutes older than me. Fraternal twins. Definetely different eggs. He is a very talented singer and was always an excellent showman. When I got back to Conn., we agreed to try a new musical project together. We had been in bands before, but that ended when he got involved with the nightclub, and I went to Chicago. He agreed to let me put together a band that would be built around him as a front man. My job, as Musical Director, was to pick the musicians, and select repertoire based on our common musical interests and skills. The drummer who had worked with me for three years before I left for Chicago, and had come to Detroit with me; got the nod. I also brought in an excellent guitarist/songwriter, whom I had been very close friends with since we were teenagers, and on bass, a guy from the next town who not only played very well, but who fit in with all of us like he'd been there all along. I switched off on keyboards and guitars, and did all the arranging. We named the group The Foster Brothers Band, using the Allman Brothers Band as a model. Songs flew together in rehearsal. There was a  spirit of teamwork, mutual respect, and common ground that felt incredible, and as any musician can tell you, to find that "chemistry" is difficult, if not rare, and when you do find it, it's very special. This band was like a family, and in a very short time the band was sounding like it had been together for years. It was not the first time I had put together a good band, but it was the first time since I had gained all that touring experience in Chicago and Detroit. And the difference was noticeable. From the very first gig, word of mouth reports on the band were very positive. High paying gigs and fairly large club venues, as well as huge audience turnouts happened almost immediately, and we were just getting started. There was only one problem. My brother hated to rehearse. 

Playing In The Snow

I don't want to give the impression here that everything in my life here had suddenly become entirely about the drugs. But the steady slide in that direction was, without a doubt, underway. What I didn't realize until many years later was, that the spiral into addiction almost seemed necessary. When I wasn't high, I was in real pain. When I was high, I still was in pain... I just didn't seem to notice it as much, and so I was able to function on many levels. And music and business seemed to be the areas I functioned in best. But now, instead of a joint every half hour as I played or wrote music, I had one foot planted firmly in music, and the other firmly planted in the world of drugs. And it wasn't just pot anymore. I was using cocaine regularly. I was able to maintain that balancing act very well, for a very long time. But not without increasingly destructive consequenses beginning to appear with greater frequency in my life. In less than a year, things would get even worse, because a drug that I had always felt I'd never do, and which had never had any appeal for me, and I had always scorned, along with anyone who used it...would become the most important thing in my reality and virtually control my life for the next two decades. My slide into heroin addiction was coming, and it was all in the name of relief. As I look back at this period today, with the clarity that comes with time and perspective, I really believe I was having a breakdown, a complete sensory overload, a total inability to cope with the emotional onslaught of feelings and pain that resulted from the trauma of my Mom's murder, it's aftermath, and from the guilt I felt because I secretly feared my involvement in drugs might have possibly been the indirect cause of her murder. And I was also very angry. I was angry at what the police had done to me and my life. I was angry with my Dad, and his unwillingness to help the police get to the truth. And what about my Dad's girlfriend and her failed polygraph? What about her motives? And why wouldn't she or my Dad cooperate with the investigation? And I was angry at the total apathy of my family. Didn't anybody but me care about justice for my Mom? It seemed to me that nobody did. I was seething in anger. I was in real trouble, but nobody was paying attention. Somebody should have seen it. Somebody should have known something was wrong with me. But I had begun withdrawing from family members who didn't use, and partied with the ones who did, and never let anyone else get close enough to me to know me well enough to see it. I should have been in a hospital. I should have been seeking grief counseling. But nobody seemed to notice what was happening with me, not even me...and what I ended up doing was self-medicating. Narcotics vs.Thorazine. What a choice. Addiction or an institution. I guess I liked being the one making the decision on where I was...and what I'd use...and when...and how much. And at the time, I guess I thought I was handling things very well...

"Most Wanted"

It seemed like I was living my life as if I had been on the "Ten Most Wanted" list. I trusted very few people. And those people knew that there were rules...and that those rules were unbendable. I was very strict. It was very simple, really. If you were my friend, or were invited into my world, and wanted to stay, you were told...and told just once...Never stop out at my house without calling first and being cleared...Never bring anybody to my house...Never talk about drugs on the telephone...Never have buddies in the car when you stopped by or met me somewhere...always come alone...and...the biggest one of all...Never break the rules. I was a little easier on the women. But not much. I didn't trust them either. I often felt I had to be on guard for the police trying to slide into my life, dressed in a deceptively alluring package...so my relationships with women who I didn't know were usually tainted by my suspicious nature. And if friends were brave enough or close enough to me to bring their girlfriends that I did know to a late night party of mine...another rule was...all business still had to be conducted in private, in another area of the house. I encouraged my friends to look at the reality of my situation, and to take a look at the fact that...if they had the chance, the police wouldn't think twice about busting them... to get to me. And most of them saw the logic in my reasoning and followed the rules. And the people who were in my life wanted to stay... because I had what they wanted, and I was much safer, and the quality of my products was much better than their other options. Besides, I treated my friends very, very, well. It was not uncommon for me to lay out several hundred dollars worth of cocaine and pot in an evening. But if you broke any of the rules more than once, you were gone...and no longer welcome in my life...there were no third chances. When I look back on it now, it almost seems like I was taking hostages...

The Feelings from Dealing

One of the things that I experienced as a result of having drugs in my possession and in my house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week was the awareness that my life was totally illegal, and therefore I was always a target of the police. And after my experience with the police after the murder, I was sure that I was an even higher priority to them, since the case was still unsolved and open, and there is no statute of limitations on murder cases. I knew that some members of the community, and some of the police, still considered me to be a person who had gotten away with murder. So I trusted very few people. I was always fearful of being set up and busted by someone who might try to infiltrate my "inner circle". I figured if that happened, my credibility as an "innocent person" would be gone, and to then frame me for the murder, with a circumstantial case, would be easy for the cops to do. So on top of all the feelings I had returned to Connecticut with, my return to dealing added a new level of fear and paranoia to an already overwhelming smorgasborg of painful emotions. It was around this time that I first tried cocaine. I liked it. It made me feel powerful, which was very attractive after feeling so completely powerless at the hands of the police... and the band in Detroit. But it was very expensive. At that time, cocaine was not a mainstream drug like it is today. You had to be really well-connected to even get cocaine, and back then...it was the real thing...ether washed, from Peru, and often over $100.00 per gram or about $2200.00 per ounce. It was called "the rich man's drug" for that reason. Back then, it was processed in small batches, made by chemists, from labs in Peru or Bolivia...it wasn't kerosene-washed crap made by farm workers in chicken coops in the jungles of Columbia, like most of the cocaine that has been available since the early 1980's. And because of the quality, and the ingredients...it had a very euphoric high. And it was very illegal, with far greater penalties than pot...if you were caught with it. Getting involved with cocaine, and cocaine dealing just added to my fears, my paranoia...and my isolation...but I loved the way it made me feel..and I didn't worry about the cost...or the consequences.

Back to Insanity

I had never felt so low. I had never been fired from a band before, and it was little solace to me when I found out the band didn't survive my leaving Detroit. I felt used and betrayed. And now I was heading into a No Man's Land, because I was going back to the place that only a few months earlier, had felt like Hell. Although I didn't want to go back, I had nowhere else to go. I was overwhelmed with powerful feelings...anger, fear, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, grief, confusion...it was chaos in my head, and I couldn't shut it off. And the closer I got to Conn., the stronger the feelings got. One thing that helped was the fact that my drummer, who had witnessed everything that had happened in Detroit, thought I had been screwed, too, and at that time, any validation of what I was feeling, helped. We decided to make another attempt at the band that the murder had unexpectedly ended. I was very grateful for my music. It was the only thing that seemed to make sense in a life that had become insane. I look back on it all now, and realize that I was in the early stages of a breakdown, but I had no clue...so I just kept on putting one foot in front of the other, the only way I knew how. As soon as I got back to Conn., I immediately got back into dealing...I was totally broke, and I knew how to make money fast doing that. One thing that happens when you're a dealer is...you always have lots of drugs, and once I was back in safe and comfortable surroundings, I found myself using more than I ever had before. And I was totally OK with that, because I felt a little bit better when I was high. I was still in a lot of pain, but it seemed bearable when I was loaded. And it seemed like everyone else I knew  was using like I was, so I never questioned it. If people stared at me when I walked down the streets of my hometown... either I didn't notice, or I didn't care...or so I thought at the time. I expanded my drug business, selling large amounts of pot, and found that although I was using very high grade stuff all the time, it wasn't costing me a dime, and in fact I had more money coming in than I had ever had, and that was "proof" that I was OK...It was also a very good thing that I was making a lot of money, because very soon I was going to need it. The pot just wasn't working the way I wanted it to anymore, it just wasn't taking care of the emotional pain that was building inside of me, and I was about to  move up to hard drugs...as cocaine came into my reality.  

Motor City Madness

In 1973, Detroit was a crazy city, and at that time it was the murder capital of the world. After I had arrived there, I was told to forget even going into the city after 6:00PM or I could get shot.  There were lots of wierd drugs there, too. Stuff like Angel Dust and Ketamine. It wasn't the best place to go to heal from the trauma of my Mom's murder. But it was where the band I was joining was from. I had come to Detroit with the drummer from the Connecticut band I had been working on at the time of the murder, who agreed to be my "roadie"...and with Carol, the girl I had been living with in Conn. We shared one motel room, and money was always tight. The band I came out there to play with had rented a recording studio, and all we did was write and rehearse music for a forthcoming album. As a result, we weren't playing out, and no money was coming in. My room was paid for, and I got some weekly expense money, but it barely covered our food costs. It was poverty. And it was tense, due to the close quarters. The band seemed very tense, too. Mitch was under a lot of pressure from his record label to produce a new hit album. I couldn't determine if the tension I was sensing was from what I had just gone through, or was really coming from my new bandmates. The guitarist was great, and had just finished two years of backing up John Lennon, but he had a big ego, and a big problem with speed. He was always wired. And he didn't have any performance gear in Detroit. I never found out why. I was hired as a keyboardist for this band, but I always carried all of my guitar amps with me wherever I moved to, just in case my services on guitars were ever needed. I loved the guitar. And my gear was the best...huge customized British amps. So I let this guy use all my stuff. I wanted to be a team player. The best bands are a team..and I wanted this thing to work. So I showed up on time, I always did my job, I played well, and I didn't complain about the lack of money, gigs, or gear. I was the most normal one in the group. And that is a scary thought, because I was far from normal. Everyone else in the band would regularly show up at the studio late, with no apology or explanation, and there was always a lot of secrecy. I never felt like I was in the loop. Two weeks before we were going to record the new album, the Mitch told me he wanted a piano in the group, and told me to pick one, the record label was paying for it. When I told him which one I wanted, the guitar player went nuts, and said that nobody who was a professional would play with that piano. I pointed out to him that he was playing only because he was using all of my gear...and I was angry enough to finally bring up the tardiness, the secrecy, and the drug problems. He didn't like that very much at all...and that night he laid an ultimatum on Mitch... either I was gone...or he was gone. I didn't stand a chance once that happened...after all, he had just finished two years with John Lennon...and the next day, I was fired. Three days later, the band in Detroit broke up...unable to go on without me or my gear...but for the first time in my life...I had been fired from a band.

Music vs. Drugs.

Since I wasn't putting together my own band anymore, the need to generate huge amounts of cash had vanished. I realized that when I was touring or playing out with bands outside of Conn., I wasn't dealing. I also used a lot less drugs. I'm not sure why that was true. Maybe it was because I was focusing on what was really important. Maybe, if I wasn't dealing, I couldn't afford to use the way I had become accustomed to. Or maybe it was just my rule about doing business only with friends I knew well. I still smoked pot when I could, but I had already learned everything I thought I was going to learn from psychedelic drugs, and when it stopped feeling like they were "teaching" me, they just weren't fun anymore. An hour into a trip, I'd say to myself.."Do I really have to feel like this for twelve more hours?" It had stopped being spiritual, and had just become chemical, and I didn't like the way that felt. So I stopped doing them. And so a joint,or a bowl of hashish now and then was all I really did. I never really liked alcohol. It made me stupid and sick. So I just concentrated on my music.

 But something different was happening. I was irritable, I was out of focus, I had a lot less patience, and I was feeling an anger that I was very unfamiliar with. I was frustrated with the way I had to leave things in Conn., and I couldn't shake the feeling that something there was unresolved. I know today that I had never allowed myself to feel the real pain of what had happened. I just avoided it, and ran to Detroit, thinking that the problem was where I was. I found when I got to Detroit was that I was having a lot of difficulty adjusting to my new home..everything felt "off" there, too. One thing was clear to me. I had lost a lot of my confidence, my self-esteem, and my creative fire. I didn't see it in those terms at that time..it was more like feeling that I was the "odd man out," and that I just didn't fit in anymore. I thought it was just the band, and some of it may have been, but I think what it really was..I had lost my sense of who I was, and that's a problem, no matter where you are. I was in a state of confusion and pain, but didn't know how to fix that, and because I wasn't using a lot of drugs, I was feeling that stuff even more. And it just kept getting worse..    

Getting Out of "Dodge"......

Everything felt different. Nothing felt like "home" anymore. People who had known me my entire life would cross to the other side of the street when they saw me. Even though I had never been arrested for the murder, and I had been cleared as a suspect by the police, none of the newspapers reported that. But the earlier reports of "Arrest Imminent" etc. had been front page news. It felt like I had been tried and convicted in the press. My life was in shambles, and I needed to try to get it back. I realized it would be easier for me to do that if I left Conn.

    The evening of the day I found my Mom dead, I didn't feel like being alone, so I went to the club. A well-known band from Boston, The James Montgomery Band, who played regularly at the club, was there. We were good friends. James was originally from Detroit. Near the end of the night, a number of musicians from Detroit who were there visiting him were invited to sit in. So was I, and I accepted. I know that might sound strange, but music is a great healer and a great release from pain, and I needed it. I'm sure some people in the audience who were aware of what had just happened in my life, perceived my getting on stage as cold and indifferent, but all the musicians understood. I played with real intensity that night. I was channeling all of my pain through the music. And it was very good. Afterwards, a couple of the Detroit guys came up to me to compliment me on my playing, and when they found out I had just found my Mom murdered a few hours earlier, they were floored. One guy, Tim Schafe, was the Musical Director and bass player for The Mitch Ryder Band, a very well-known band based in Detroit, and he told me I had a job waiting for me in his band, if I wanted it. I definetely wanted it, but the police tied me up for the next two months, and I never thought that band would wait for me..after all, we had just met, and two months is a long time to wait when you are trying to fill an opening in a performing band. When I was finally cleared by the police, and given permission to leave the state, I called Detroit to find out if the job was still available. I was amazed to find out that they had never even looked for anyone,and that they were just waiting for me to get there. I didn't need a lot of time.. I was ready to go. It was time to see if I could get what I had thought of as my life..back..and so I got the hell out of "Dodge", and hit  the road for Detroit.

"With friends like that...."

After I told the detectives the story of my "friend", and what he had said only an hour after the police arrived at my Mom's house, I also remembered how strange it was that I had been with him at all on the previous night. I hadn't seen him or talked to him in over a year, even though I was living with his sister at the time. And then, on that night...of all nights...for him to just walk back into my life, like an old lost friend...it was just very strange. And he hadn't shown up at the club until after midnight. At the time, I thought he was just putting an old problem we had, behind us...extending the olive branch...so to speak. He was a drug business connection, and we had a falling out a year earlier, over a shipment of hashish he had supposedly sent to me from Amsterdam, but I had never received. He wanted to be paid. I wanted proof that he had sent it. I wanted proof he wasn't in New York City, while just saying that he went to Amsterdam. The only thing that would have proved that to me would have been the hashish arriving...or some indications of legal intervention by the authorities. There were no reports of seizures, from Customs or the Postal Service, and no police inquiries, so I had serious doubts that this guy ever even went to Europe at all. He was a really nasty guy, and always said that if anyone ever crossed him, he'd get even, and they would never even know it when he did. If I wasn't with his sister, we probably wouldn't have had much contact with each other. He was very devious. And violent. After I mentioned to the police detectives the conversation I had with him, and his boast, they dropped a bomb on me and said... "you know Mike, that guy was your alibi for much of the night in question, but did you ever realize that that also means you were his only alibi for that same time period?" I was stunned. I had never thought of that. But it sounded just like this guy...it was exactly the way he'd plan a revenge. Not only killing the mother of an "enemy", but making that enemy the prime suspect in the crime, too...and at the very same time protecting himself by using the prime suspect to create his own alibi. I told the police my suspicions, and they said they'd look into it. A week later, the police told me that they had tried to question this guy, but he had said he had already talked with them  about all of this...and refused to answer any more questions. They said they had reached a dead end with him, unless they came up with new information, or unless something changed. I didn't know when they said that, just how much things were going to change...or how prophetic the words "dead end" would soon become...

"Who do YOU think did this?"

So I'm looking at the two detectives who had spent the last two months believing that I was a crazed butcher, and a multiple personality schizophrenic..smiling at me..acting like they had always been my friends, and telling me that I was no longer a suspect in my Mom's murder. I guess I didn't really believe it yet. And then they asked me something they had never asked me...not once...in the entire two months they had questioned me...unless it was to try to get me to implicate someone else who could connect me to the crime. Even though they had made me wonder about my sanity so profoundly that I actually wondered whether it was safe for me to actually go to sleep at night...now, they wanted my opinion on who I thought might have done it. One of the detectives, who was better at pretending he was my friend than the other, and had actually dated my sister a couple of times while I was being interrogated, no doubt to try to pump her for anything she might say that might help them to "prove" their theory about me...he walked up to me and asked me..."so, who do you think did this thing, Michael?" I was still numb, but I realized that for the past two months, I had never asked myself that question. But I was being asked now...so I thought about it. I thought about everything I could think of or remember about that day. And then I remembered something I had thought was strange. The morning I woke up at the club, before I went to my Mom's and found her, I asked the guy who had spent the night at the club partying with me if he wanted to come with me to me Mom's house for a free breakfast...and he had declined. That wasn't the response I had expected from him, but I didn't think much about it until about an hour after I had found the body, and I was disgusted with the actions of the police at the house...as they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes in the same room that my Mom's body was in...and argued with the State Police and the FBI as to who had jurisdiction on the case...tainting the crime scene and any physical evidence that might have existed there, with their petty bullshit...so I walked up the street to clear my head, and there was the guy, hanging out up the street, watching. He asked me "What's going on Mike?"...and I answered..."my Mom's dead". That was all I said. The next words out of his mouth were..."they'll never catch that guy, it was a professional hit". That didn't sit well with me at all. At the time, I remember a "red flag" going up in my mind. The word murder had never even been mentioned. But I was so overwhelmed with everything that was happening, I just forgot about it....until that detective asked that question. I told him the story...never realizing that by doing that...it would come back to haunt me...later on.

Cleared?

I'm in a room, strapped to a machine, electrodes attached everywhere, convinced that no matter what the polygraph revealed, I was about to be arrested for the brutal murder of my mother. I was very tired, mentally beat down, and extremely suspicious and nervous....after all, the real facts in this case had never been considered, no other suspects had surfaced...probably because the police never really looked past me...they were only looking for evidence that would support their theory, no matter how far-fetched that theory might be. And I was that far-fetched theory...and I was convinced that I had just given the police permission to fabricate evidence against me to support that theory. It was not a very good place to be.  The truth is, they never really looked at anyone else as a suspect when the case was still new, except for my Dad's new girlfriend, who actually had a very powerful motive, and who the police had actually put on a polygraph two days after the murder. I found out later she had failed the test, and then refused to cooperate with the investigation after that...telling my Dad she was being framed... and the police never questioned her or my Dad ever again. I resented my Dad for many years because of that. On the one hand, he was telling me I had nothing to fear if I was innocent...and it was that word if that bothered me. But it also bothered me that if that was true for me...shouldn't that be equally true for him and his new girlfriend? Shouldn't justice for my Mom be more important than anything else...especially if we were all innocent of this crime? And now here I was, already convicted in the press, and expecting a predetermined outcome on this test no matter what the truth was, and the truth was...the trail of the real killer or killers was very cold. It made perfect sense to me that the results of this polygraph test needed to come out the way the police wanted them to...what other option did they have? As I said before, the first three tests were useless, because I was so nervous and agitated about the outcome, that the machine indicated I was lying the first three times I was asked my name, and answered truthfully. That didn't do a lot to help me relax. But eventually I did relax enough for them to take three valid tests. I waited alone in the room for about fifteen minutes while detectives and the polygrapher evaluated the results. Finally the detectives came into the room and notified me that I had been totally cleared and was no longer considered a suspect. They asked me how I felt. It was only then I realized, I couldn't feel anything....

The Damage Done...

I can't begin to tell you what it feels like to be 21yrs. old, inserted into a set of circumstances that seem almost surreal, and then locked in a room for two months with authority figures and criminal investigators, who sometimes gently, and sometimes not so gently...are trying to convince you that you are insane. I know when it started, I absolutely knew I hadn't committed this crime, but to be honest, after two months of relentless pounding away at me, I wasn't sure anymore..after all, according to them, I wouldn't know it if I had done it. I was scared to think they might be right, because I still thought I had a grip on reality... and on my life...but my known use of psychedelic drugs gave them the opening they needed to chip away at my version of the facts. And I had gotten to the point where I was actually afraid to go to sleep at night..on the slim possibility that they were right, and I was wrong. They were driving me crazy, and after a while, I became anxious for them to either charge me or clear me, because I really felt like I was losing touch with everything that made sense to me. I refused to admit to something I didn't do, or admit to a possibility that I just didn't believe was possible, and the police were getting as frustrated as I was...and so they came up with a way to get a definitive answer, once and for all. They wanted to put me on a polygraph machine. I was dumbfounded, furious, and petrified, all at the same time. I couldn't believe they had subjected me to this mental torture for two months, if all I really needed to do was to take a polygraph test. I never thought for a second I would fail the test. But, on the other hand, I wondered why, only now...after everything they had tried on me to get me to confess to something I hadn't done had failed...why now, should I trust the results of their polygraph? I was sure that no matter what the true results were, the police would say I failed the polygraph test, and use that to justify an unwarranted arrest.They told me if the results cleared me, I would no longer be considered a suspect. I didn't know if I believed that at all, but I was so exhausted from the whole ordeal, that I finally just said OK. This had to end. I couldn't take it anymore. And so they set up the test. The first three times I started to take it, the machine said I was lying when they asked me my name. I was sure I was being set up..and I didn't trust the police, I didn't trust their machine, and worst of all, I didn't know if I trusted myself...I started to wonder...maybe, I didn't really know my name...

Am I Cybill?

It became very obvious to me that the police were going to do whatever they had to to arrest me for my Mom's murder, my guilt or innocence was irrelevant...and because of my father's status in our community, and the fact that it was a small town, where things like this just didn't happen...the case was very high-profile, and was making news statewide. The police were under pressure to make an arrest, and anything plausible in the way of finding a suspect would do. And I guess I was it. After the police couldn't break down any of my eleven alibi witnesses, they came up with a new theory. Since I had only one alibi witness from about 4:30AM on, and that was a fellow drug dealer that had stayed at the club with me, there was a time period where we both claimed to be asleep at the club, and the police saw that as an opportunity...and it was then that they presented me with their latest hypothesis...and it was...that I would go to sleep at, say, 4:00AM as Michael, but would I would wake up a little later as "Harry", and that "Harry" would go out and kill people, then come back and fall asleep as if nothing had occurred...and in the morning, I would wake up as Michael again, and Michael wouldn't remember anything about "Harry", and therefore wouldn't even be aware of a murder taking place. At first I actually thought they were joking, but when I found out that they were deadly serious about this,  I had to deal with the idea that now, they thought I was a multiple personality psychotic killer. And if their theory was correct, I wouldn't even know it if I was...or if I had done something like that to my own mother. And for the very first time...I was really scared. I was scared that I'd be framed for something I didn't do...but an even greater fear surfaced in my mind...as I wondered...could that be possible?

The Interrogations...

Of course, the police were very interested in talking to me. One member of the local police force had leaked to the newspapers that an arrest was imminent, and that they were looking very hard at a family member. I was furious, as well as mortified. I couldn't imagine anyone really believing I had actually stabbed my Mom to death. I was a "flower child", and I was totally non-violent. And I knew I hadn't done this thing...so I told the cops to go to hell. Then I was paid a visit by the local Chief of Police, who informed me that the officer in question had been suspended for what he did, and he apologized on behalf of the entire department. He told me that the sooner they were able to rule me out as a suspect, the sooner they could focus on finding who was really responsible for my Mom's murder. That made a lot of sense to me, and since I knew I hadn't done anything anyway, I agreed to meet with the police the next day. I never even thought about a lawyer...I thought I'd be done with it in an hour or two, and then the police could concentrate on finding the real killer. I also thought they would allow me the time and the luxury of grieving for my Mom. I couldn't have been more wrong about that. Every morning for the next two months, I would be picked up at my house by two State Police detectives. They would then take me to a small room in a barracks...a bare room except for a table, three chairs, and a tape recorder...and for the first week, for eight hours a day...all they did was make me tell them over and over and over again, what I had done and what I had seen from the 24 hours prior to the murder...right up to the moment when I called the police...and they had arrived...and asked about the knife. Here I am, trying to forget the most horrible thing I had ever seen, and these guys were doing everything in their power to burn it into my memory forever. They kept trying to get me to change my story...but it didn't change, because it was the only one I knew, and it was what I was sticking to. I had eleven people who had been with me the night my Mom was killed...(although the police have never released the actual time of death, they did tell me it had happened some time the night before, while I was at the club.) The police questioned all eleven people, and they all verified that I had been with them exactly as I said I had been. At first, the theory was that all eleven were lying to protect me, but as it became increasingly clear that theory was preposterous, they developed a "new" theory...and the new one was even more far-fetched...

The Murder...

It was now June, 1973. I was in the process of trying to put together my first all-original band project in Connecticut. My brothers owned a huge concert-club, The Shaboo Inn, one of the most respected music rooms on the East Coast, and the place was big enough to give me a place to rehearse the new band, as well as the opportunity to meet many world-class musicians who were constantly showing up there to perform. If I had to be in Connecticut, I thought I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. That belief was about to change, and along with it...my life... which would forever be different. As it turned out, I was in exactly the wrong place, at exactly the wrong time.

    Around this time, my father and my mother seperated, after 25 years of marriage. My father had found someone new, and my Mom was very despondent. I used to visit her a lot, just to try and cheer her up, and she had finally turned a corner and was starting to move on with her life. But she adamantly refused to give my father a divorce. He was now a very successful businessman, and decades of hard work were all paying off at once, and my Mom felt she deserved to benefit from all the years of struggle and lonliness that she had endured while my Dad worked non-stop to make it all happen, and I agreed with her. We were very close. I was her "baby". So I visited her a lot. Much more than my siblings or my Dad did. One morning, after spending the night at my brothers' nightclub rehearsing, and then partying, I went over to my Mom's for breakfast, and to check in with her. When I got there, I found her dead in the living room, brutally murdered, stabbed 39 times, at least that is what the police told me later. In a state of shock, I called the Fire Dept. for an ambulance...I guess I couldn't comprehend she had been dead for a while. The police arrived first, and when they got there, the very first thing the first detective asked me was..." where did you hide the knife, kid?" And I knew I was in big trouble. I had hair down to my waist, I had found the body, I had been the last person known to have seen her alive, it was only three years after the Manson murders, I was a known drug user and dealer, and statistically, most of these types of crimes are committed by a family member. As I looked at the horrible truth, I realized my nightmare was only just beginning....    

The Best Laid Plans....

Connecticut felt nice. But in some ways it also felt like a let-down. After all, I had done more living and experienced more new things in a year than most of my childhood friends would for their entire lives. One thing I noticed right away...most of my old friends had no desire to find out what life might be like outside of that comfort zone of hometown. They had  plans of their own, and for the most part, safety and constants were a big part of them. It seemed like most of the people I had grown up with didn't take a lot of risks. And it seemed like everything in my life was about  taking risks. I was comfortable taking risks. So leaving a successful band in Chicago, to start one of my own, seemed logical...but after I actually made the change, I started to become aware of just what I would need to do in order to put together a band that would meet my increasingly demanding standards. One thing I didn't realize until I had started, was just how much money was required to put together and maintain a really professional musical entity; it required employees, lots of gear, recording studio time, promotion, and that all costs money. Lots of money. And I had come back from Chicago with almost none. One didn't get rich playing the blues in 1973. But one thing I did know was... a whole lot of musicians...and like me, they all got high. And I also knew a lot of people who had access to very good drugs. So it became a "logical" leap for a risk-taker like myself to conclude that the best way to make the money I needed to put together this band was to finance it with the profits I could make by taking drugs from Peter...and selling them to Paul...at a slight mark-up. And so that's what I did. And I was very good at it. And I was very careful. If I hadn't grown up with you, or hadn't played music with you, or you weren't a well-known musician...then I wouldn't sell drugs to you. So if someone wasn't real close to me...or wasn't a musician like me...they couldn't get near me. And so began my self-imposed isolation from anyone who wasn't just like me, and the beginning of my drug problems, because the focus was very slowly and very subtly changing from music...to music, money and drugs. At this time,however, I think it was still all about the music. And I refused to cut any corners with it. Everything, whether it was the drugs, or the gear, or anything in my life...had to be first-class. The best gear, the best players, the best of everything...after all, one never regrets spending more to get the very best...I guess that was a lesson I learned from my Dad...that you always get what you pay for....

On Tour

I lived in Chicago for the better part of a year. It was where the band I was in was based, and Buddy Guy owned a small but legendary nightclub, The Checkerboard Lounge, on Chicago's South Side...which was Chicago's ghetto...and almost entirely black folks...but the truth is, we spent a great deal of our time on the road. I was getting my first chance to travel and "see" things, and at the same time being paid for doing it...and for doing what I loved. I was only 20...and I just soaked everything in as it came to me...I was very open...and I was living a dream. I travelled across a lot of the U.S. and Canada, and I remember how disappointed I was when the band went to Australia for a two week tour, very soon after I had joined the group, and I had to stay in Chicago, because trying to get work visas on such short notice was  nearly impossible, or so I was told. I drove out to California to meet the band on their return from Australia, where we were to do a tour up through the entire state. The Fillmore West...The Winterland Ballroom...The Whiskey A Go-Go....California was everything I had heard it was, and it being 1972, and me actually being in San Francisco, I felt like I was in the center of the Universe during the "Big Bang", and I loved all of it. We swung back East, across the country, back to Chicago, then New England, and then Canada, and with every place I visited, I realized that I was being well received by nearly all the audiences, and after six months of touring, I started thinking about putting together my own band, because after all, blues wasn't the "voice" of the Counterculture...and I still thought I was a part of something very important that was happening on a global scale. So after playing Canada, we did another swing through New England, and when the band returned to play Connecticut, I decided it was time for me to take a risk...I had gained a lot of confidence and experience while I had toured with this band...but it had not all been great...there had been some problems, as there always is on the road, but touring was new to me, and I hadn't developed the experience and awareness of that as much as I would over time. Plus, I was the only white guy in the band, and I felt a little bit lonely...and a little bit like I was "on the outside...looking in"...something I realize today had very little to do with the band...but had everything to do with the Disease of Addiction. So I said good bye to Buddy and Junior, and all my Chicago friends, and returned to Connecticut, to start my own project. I was very grateful and appreciative of the opportunity I had been given by them...and I was also very optimistic about my future....

Chicago

 Chicago is an amazing city. It has a little bit of everything, and for a kid from a small town in Connecticut, that was quite a change. All of a sudden I was catapulted into the "real" world, no longer in the sheltered safety of the little town I had grown up in, but "out there", in a world where you had to be strong to survive. What I did like about Chicago was that it was a huge city, but in many ways, it had a small town feel to it, and I found it to be a very friendly place. All of a sudden I was in an environment where everything was new, and none of the familiar "comfort zones" applied anymore. Instead of being a "big fish in a small pond" I felt like a minnow, trying to survive in a vast ocean. I was questioning everything I thought I knew about myself..."do I really have what it takes to survive in the real  world...am I good enough as a musician to 'make it' in the big city"...and sometimes...."how did I get here, and who am I kidding"...after all, I taught myself music for the most part, and I still questioned whether I actually knew what I was doing. I was very surprised to find that once I actually started to perform in Chicago, word of this "new organ player" in this well known band spread quickly, and many very well known musicians came to the places we performed at...and some actually tried to recruit me for their bands. Of course, I refused....I felt it would be a betrayal to the man who had taken a chance on me and given me the job which had brought me there in the first place, but for the first time in my life I actually knew that I knew what I was doing musically, and that geography didn't have a thing to do with it, and that the future was wide open for me.....and it felt incredible to really know that...and my confidence grew tremendously, and as any performing musician will tell you, the level of confidence and authority that a musician displays and performs with, has a great deal to do with how he sounds, and how he is perceived...and I knew I was on my way...because the more audiences respond to that confidence, the more confident one becomes, and the process just feeds on itself and grows.

Woodstock Nation...and an Amazing Opportunity

  A few years before moving to Chicago, I was still in high school, and the world was going through a major social and cultural change. I was part of a generation that was more educated than any generation in history, and we were questioning every "conventional" wisdom. The Beatles were leading the way. Haight-Ashbury was always in the news. Woodstock Nation was everywhere, and I was very proud to be a part of all of that. We all felt we were changing the world through "higher conciousness", and like many others my age at that time, I used a lot of the mind expanding drugs which were the catalyst to many of the social changes that were happening. I started getting high when I was 17. I had resisted that for a few years before I started, because of my fear of what it might do to me or my music.. but as time went on, more and more people I had deep respect for were using pot and psychedelic drugs, and none of them appeared to have any negative consequences...but they did have an awareness that I seemed to be missing. I wanted to be a part of what was going on all around me, and once I started my early drug experimentation, I learned a great deal. I learned a lot about myself, and what was important to me...nature, the world, other people, God, spirituality, and music...from those experiences. I thought that this was incredible, and that everybody should experience what I perceived as this gift, and so it seems obvious to me now, why nearly all the people in my life at that time shared my viewpoints, my beliefs, and my lifestyle. And life was great. Music was the vehicle that was at the forefront of many of the cultural revolutions at that time, so I felt I was in exactly the right place at the right time to make a positive difference. Hell, we (the members of "Woodstock Nation") were even able to bring to an end, an unjust and immoral war. And for a while, that entire reality seemed like destiny and fate, and I thought fate was kind, because it seemed like a very good destiny was unfolding before me...

Up to that point, I had experienced what felt like local celebrity status with the success of the band I had put together with my brothers. We had played mostly cover songs, many of them from excellent, but very obscure bands, and the public had responded in a very receptive way to our choices of repertoire, and to the few original songs we had begun writing and  performing. After over four years of being in that band, my brothers had decided to go into a new business venture towards the end of 1971...the purchase of a huge old factory at the edge of town, which they converted into a nightclub. I began doing some side projects of my own, and had some success with them, playing some concerts at fairly large venues. I opened some shows for Cold Blood, The Soul Survivors, and The Chambers Brothers, who at that time were quite successful, and became friends with Lester Chambers, the oldest of the brothers, and the leader of that group. My association with Lester was my first real introduction to the blues as a musical genre. As my brothers new concert-club, The Shaboo Inn, became more and more successful, and more improvements kept being made to the stage, sound equipment, and lighting... national acts...mostly blues bands that played large clubs, began to appear there. One band that came to town, The Buddy Guy/Junior Wells Blues Band, had just finished making an album with Eric Clapton, who was a musician I was totally taken with...Clapton's successful band Cream, was one of my favorite bands...and I saw this band's arrival in my town as an opportunity to expand my horizons, especially since the band I had with my brothers was faltering, as the club became the new focus for them. As the members of this band pulled into the parking lot on the afternoon of their show, I approached Buddy Guy, introduced myself, and immediately asked if he needed a keyboardist...before I lost my nerve. He looked me squarely in the eyes and asked  "Why...do you think you can cut it, boy?" And without even thinking, I answered  "Yeah, I think I can cut it." His response to me was,  "We'll see, because you're playing with us tonight." I stammered out a "Wow, thanks"...and asked him when I should get there. He told me, and then just turned and walked into the club. I was panicked. The show was a near sell-out. I had never even heard any of this guy's music, and I wasn't a blues player. But it was too late to back out now. That night I went onstage to play with them with absolutely no clue as to what they would do, or if I would know the songs they called. But they didn't even call songs. Buddy just glanced in my direction and said  "this one's in 'G'...one, two three, four"...and they were into it. I played what I thought was right for what I was hearing...but I was very nervous and scared. After four songs, Buddy walked up to the mic, and asked the 1200 fans..."So what do ya all think of this young man?" The crowd roared its appreciation, and he smiled and then said..."I do believe we're gonna take this boy back to Chicago with us!" And the crowd went crazy....and I thought I was dreaming.   

The Early Years

I was born in a small town in Connecticut, the youngest of four children. I had a brother, four years older than me, a sister three years older than me, and a twin brother (fraternal), who was nine minutes older than me. As kids, we were all very close, and did lots of things together. Life growing up was  good, I came from an upper middle class family, and there was no glaring dysfunction in our house, no substance abuse, no physical abuse, no neglect, and for the most part, growing up seemed pretty "normal." Life in our house, on our street, and in our town seemed pretty much like a kind of "Leave It To Beaver Land"...if there were problems, people, for the most part, did a pretty good job of concealing them. I learned as I got older, that there are always problems in every home...but I was fortunate to have grown up in one where that didn't have a great deal of impact on me as I grew up...at least, I don't think it did. My parents were growing apart as I got older, but they kept their problems from us kids, for the most part, and although I did see some minor verbal abuse going back and forth between my parents, I think they were really just arguing about problems in their relationship that they didn't have a clue about how to fix...and eventually those problems began to surface. My Dad spent a lot of time at work, and my Mom centered her existence on us, and so as a couple...I think they just had less and less in common with each other...and I'm sure some very basic needs were not being met for either one of them...but they seemed to keep that stuff away from us...and in the privacy of their bedroom...except for the occasional argument that would happen when too many feelings bubbled to the surface. We didn't talk about feelings too much in our house, and we didn't show them very much either...but that being the only experience I had with life...I just thought we were normal...and that was how it was done. 

I learned very early on in life that I had a gift for music, both of my parents had at one time, been professional musicians..but as the pressures of raising a family increased, they had given that up for a more conventional lifestyle. As we hit our teenage years, I was close with all my brothers and my sister, too. Music must have been in the genes, because all of us sang or played, and at the time I entered high school, all four of us each had different bands. By the time I was 9 yrs.old, I was already a very skilled drummer, by 11, I was playing keyboards (self-taught), by 13, I was playing "out" professionally..by 16, I was writing my own music, and by 18, I had added guitars to the list of instruments I played. By the time I graduated high school, I was the leader of a very successful band, which featured my two brothers on lead vocals,and I knew that my future was in the music business. I had always taken my music very seriously, especially after I had heard my older brother Mark's band having a practice in the basement of our house, when I was 12 years old. From the minute I heard all that music...being created live in my basement...I was mesmerized. I became obsessed with the idea of being able to do that, too...and I guess I am very lucky to have found out at a very early age that music was my calling in life. By the time I was thirteen, I was playing in a band myself, and it quickly became the entire focus of my life. That focus changed for a brief period of time when I met Susan. She was my first love. We met towards the middle of my freshman year of high school...and almost from the minute I saw her, I was totally enraptured by her. She was very beautiful, but I was as drawn to her beautiful spirit and personality as much as I was to her physically. She became the only thing I thought about, and the feelings that I had when I was in her presence were more powerful than any feelings I had ever experienced in my life. I knew I was in love. They say that when you are in love...you know it... "balls to bone"...and when I wasn't around her...everything  just hurt. So I was more than just a little upset when my parents decided to send me away to a private school for my sophomore year in high school. The school was about thirty five miles away...and to me, it might as well have been a light-year, because I couldn't leave campus, and that meant I couldn't be around Susan. We were at that age where we were just awakening to our sexuality, and our true identities, and although nothing had really happened between us sexually, other than some making out and some physical exploring, I can truly say that I was as totally consumed with that relationship as I have been with any relationship I have had in my life...with the possible exception of Lisa...the woman who became my wife, well over twenty years later.  I think it was when I first became aware of just how powerfully "obsession" was a part of my make-up.,,and it was the first time I remember being totally overwhelmed by my feelings...and how much of an impact that had on all of my thinking and my actions. What I remember most was... I couldn't think straight, and I did whatever I had to do to survive those feelings. Within a few weeks after leaving for my new school, I could sense something changing with Susan  when I called her on the telephone. She seemed distracted, and I often spent more time on the phone with her sister, than with her... just trying to find what was really going on...and what the deal was. I eventually found out that Susan had been asked out by a popular senior boy at our old school, and that she was dating him. That was my first taste of the feeling of complete powerlessness...and I totally hated it. I hated the new boy friend, I hated the school I was at, I hated my parents for sending me there, and I hated the pain I was feeling for the very first time in my life... So this was emotional pain.... It was the most intense pain I had ever known in my short life. I decided to do everything I could to screw up at the school I was stuck in, so that I could go back to my old high school the next year...and win Susan back.  I worked hard at it, and I screwed things up at the school alright, refusing to study or do any work at all...and nearly flunking out. I had to go to summer school the following summer in order to keep from having to repeat the year...and I ended up going back to my old high school...my parents were furious with me for the sudden changes in my grades and my attitude...since I had always been a very good student...and for wasting the large amount of money they had spent to send me to what I realize today, was an incredible school...but I didn't care. School had suddenly become irrelevant. I never really liked any school after that...and looking back on it now, I realize that that was probably the first time in my life that my feelings, and my inability to cope with them...motivated me to do totally insane and self-destructive things...and while I was doing them...I felt those actions were totally justified and logical. Nothing that I did or said ever made any difference at all in helping me to win back Susan's affections...although I had one small window of opportunity that came up about a year or so later...but I fucked that up, too. I spent the remaining part of my high school years in a kind of living death...tortured by the feelings that came up in me when I saw her...and my complete inability to do anything about any of it. Susan was involved for most of the remaining years I was in school with her with that "other guy"...and I couldn't stand the feelings I was struggling with whenever I saw her. I ached for her for my entire remaining time in high school, and never really was able to really even notice any of the many other girls in school who definetely had an interest in me...and I think it was at that time that I started to really develop into the loner I became for most of my life...although "fitting in" had always felt like it was a problem for me. Although I ended up being with many beautiful women over the course of my life...I have always had very high standards that I set for the women I spent time with or got involved with...and I think Susan had a lot to do with setting that standard...although in matters of love...I have always seemed to be drawn to not only physical beauty...but a deeper connection that I have never really fully understood until recently. The only thing that brought me relief from the pain of my lost love...was my music. I loved it and I didn't have to be afraid of it turning on me...it was something that made me feel as if I was in control...it became whatever I wanted to make of it...and it made me feel powerful, and better about myself. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had a very successful band. It was around that time when I was faced with a dilemma I had no life experience with...being only 17 years old...and the ultimate irony I had to deal with at that time was that I was forced to make a choice between what at that time, were the two great loves of my life. I had finally gotten Susan to agree to go to our Junior Prom with me...it was the first time she had even looked my way in two years. I had just gotten my driver's license, I had a great restaurant picked out to take her to before the Prom, and I was determined to begin the process of winning back her love that night. It just so happened that on the day of the prom, the manager of my band...which I was the leader and driving force in...had scheduled a recording session at a recording studio for my band. We were going to record one of my first-ever original songs, and it was the first recording session of my life, and so I was very excited about doing it...without really understanding anything about what was involved, and how time-consuming that process can be. I began that day by driving ninety minutes away to the opposite end of the state, where the recording studio was located. As the band's leader, I couldn't refuse...there were six other people depending on me. And since the session was supposed to be over early enough for me to have no trouble getting to Susan's house on time and then on to the Prom, I had quickly agreed... and thought to myself how cool it was that both of these things were happening on the same day. In my mind, I thought being able to tell Susan I had just made my first record would just help me make that whole day that much more special. The only problem was that I had never cut a record before, and had no idea about how that process worked and what it entailed. After a few hours of recording, we were nowhere close to being finished with the process, and although I tried to excuse myself and leave for home..so I could get ready for the prom...the manager of the band who was paying for everything, and all the guys who I played with in the band and were depending on me and this record...all made it very clear that I could leave only when we were finished with the recording. I realized, too late, that I should have never agreed to the session at all on that particular day. I should have rescheduled it. Today that is so clear. Back then, I was 17, and I couldn't see past my own fear, my own fantasies, and my sense of obligation to others. I didn't know how to tell our manager who was financing our recording session, and was helping my band in many other ways..."No I just can't do this today". He had just cosigned a huge loan for me to buy a Hammond B-3 organ, which was and still is, the best organ ever made in the world, which had elevated the status of my playing to a completely different level, and which I still have and use today. My father had scoffed at the idea of spending over $4000.00 (in 1969 dollars) for an organ...when I had asked him for the help with the loan, and which at that time, was more money than a new car would have cost me. So after I had gotten the loan from our manager, I just felt like I had to agree to this session...to do less felt like it would have been the same as if I had told this guy "fuck you" after he had gone way out on a limb to help me. I was caught between a rock and a hard place...and did the best I could to speed up the process, but in the end, I picked up Susan over four hours later than I was supposed to. There was no restaurant or romantic dinner. When I got to Susan's house, I could tell her Dad was so angry that it felt like he wanted to kill me for hurting his little girl on her Prom night. It was a very uncomfortable start to a very uncomfortable evening. We ended up getting to the prom for only about an hour before it ended...and the night felt like it was over before it had even begun. I was so angry with myself for blowing this thing with her that I couldn't think straight. Needless to say, that was the end of any hope I ever had of reconciling with Susan...and I think it literally took me years to get over that. I had gotten an introduction to love, to love lost, powerlessness, hopelessness, emotional pain, and feeling very isolated and lonely...all in a fairly short period of time. It was my first taste of an incredible euphoria, followed almost immediately by a devastating "crash". I would experience that sensation many times in my life as the years went on. It was only a few months after this happened that I first tried marijuana. Almost from the very first time, I knew that I loved the way that it made me feel...and once I had tried it...I never looked back. I guess what I had no ability to recognize back then was...that getting high allowed me to cope with those feelings that I had no ability to manage. I guess I didn't recognize that I was already having great dificulty with coping with my feelings of pain, lonliness, and disappointment. At the time, I didn't think that I felt bad without drugs...as much as I really loved the way I felt when I was high...and so once I started...I was off to the races...and my progression into stronger and more dangerous drugs was almost a "textbook" progression into addiction. Within a few months I had begun to experiment with hashish and psychedelic drugs...and at that time I felt as though I was undergoing an amazing awakening of the spirit. At the very same time...my band was becoming very successful...and Woodstock had just happened...and so I immersed myself into my music and the Counterculture...for me, they seemed to almost go hand in hand. As I felt a sense of belonging that I had never felt before...starting to grow within me, and a feeling of being a part of something that was really important, and truly powerful...I felt for the first time in my life that I had a very clear idea of who I was and where I was headed...and that was reinforced by the band's increasing success. By the time I graduated high school, I was living in a different reality than most of my classmates...and it was disorienting for me in some ways. I had been an over-achiever...I had been a multiple "Letter" winner in two varsity sports, was a leader in the student body, I was the Election Committee Chairman in the Student Council, was the Social Editor of the school newspaper, and was Chairman of the Senior Fall Dance...but by the end of my senior year, I had become a "bad influence" as far as the faculty at the high school was concerned. I was a political radical, a war protester, I had long hair, my own apartment, I was a known drug user, I missed over eighty days of my Senior year in High School because of all the days I skipped, and still graduated with  a four year grade average of 88...probably because I had accumulated most of the credits I needed to graduate by the end of my Junior year...which I'm sure really pissed them off. I was also the leader of what had become one of the best known and most successful bands bands in the state of Connecticut, and I was already making a very comfortable living as a musician. I was voted "Best Musician" and "Most Argumentative" by my classmates in our Class Yearbook...and as I look back on those distinctions now...I realize they saw me very clearly, indeed. Both of those attributes had a lot to do with who I would become as I got older. One was very good, and one was very destructive, and foreshadowed a much deeper underlying problem. My entire life seemed to be a contradiction of itself. At the time, however, I chose to focus on the "Best Musician" title I had been given. I opted not to go to college as a result of the band's obvious success, much to the dismay of my parents, who knew first hand, some of the challenges of the music business. Still, they did their best to be at least partially supportive of my choice, and when I was 20, and an internationally known blues artist, who has since become a legend...and a Grammy Award winner...was appearing at a new nightclub my two brothers had purchased. Somehow, I managed a live audition with that band, and to my amazement...I got the job. And so my journey to Chicago, and the journey of my life...and my serious musical career...began.