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.