Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  Can you explain the history of Al’s family?

  Ed Jourgensen Al and his mother came to America in 1961, and they were in Miami for a brief period because at that time his grandfather could not leave Cuba. When Castro initially took over, he was supported by the vast majority of the population until they realized he was a communist/socialist, which he had not revealed. Initially Castro said anyone who could leave was free to go, and when he realized he was losing the movers and shakers of the country, he made it much more restrictive for them to leave. Al’s grandfather was very involved with the University School of Veterinary Medicine, so it was more difficult for him to get out of the country. The rest of the family came to Miami ahead of him. He was finally able to leave because of a company that he had relationships with in veterinary medicine, American Breeders Service, out of Madison, Wisconsin. There was a political connection at the company that helped him get out of the country. He joined the family in Miami and immediately had a job because of his relationship. So the family moved to Chicago. So here’s this family from Cuba driving north because the head of the family, the grandfather, had gainful employment in Wisconsin. But they ended up in Chicago because the company wanted him to help develop the South American market for their products, and it made more sense for him to work in Chicago, which was near O’Hare Airport, rather than work out of Deforest, Wisconsin.

  How did you meet Al’s mother, Maggie?

  Ed She got a job at a manufacturing company where I was working called Hirsh in Skokie, Illinois, and that’s where we met. I was in sales, handling the Sears account. We got married in 1964. At that point I had known Al for two years already, and he was living with his grandmother. Within a year of moving to Chicago his grandfather moved out, and he and Al’s grandmother eventually got divorced.

  Weren’t you an aspiring NASCAR driver?

  Ed There used to be a quarter-mile track right at O’Hare field, and we used to race cars there. The whole time I was dating Maggie I spent a large amount of time at the racetrack or in the garage working on the cars. But my personal driving career was relatively short because I couldn’t afford to keep repairing the car. So those of us who were involved agreed to hire a driver, and at that point we did quite well locally. By 1962 or 1963 we were running the NASCAR circuit, but it was a different world back then. NASCAR wasn’t what it is today by any stretch of the imagination. Up north the sanctioning body was USAC, and there were only certain events where USAC drivers and NASCAR drivers would compete. Daytona and Charlotte were two of them. Back in those days there weren’t the sponsors there are today. It wasn’t the business that it is now, and if you were good, you had a factory sponsorship, meaning they provided all the equipment. We still did all the work on it, but at least all the good stuff was provided for you. We got a factory ride in 1962, ’63, and into ’64, when I got married. But then Ralph Nader came along, and all the factories backed out of racing. At that point I did not see it as a sustainable career. I had already been working at Hirsh, so I made a decision to drop out of the racing end of it because it was not supporting myself financially.

  Al said that you resented having to leave the racing world, and in doing so you abandoned your life’s dream.

  Ed No, that wasn’t the case. I’ve never talked to him about it, and I can see how that would be his take on it. None of us on the team were able to put in all the money that was needed to be competitive without the factory involvement. To hang around and wait for two or three years or whatever it took for the factory to get back involved in racing wasn’t practical.

  The day after his sixth birthday Al was uprooted from his grandmother in Chicago to live with you. Was that traumatic for him?

  Ed Neither he nor his grandmother were particularly happy about it. They knew about it ahead of time, but it wasn’t a move that they were looking forward to.

  Did he have great trouble speaking English when he came to live with you, and was that problematic for him?

  Ed When he came over from Miami, Spanish was certainly the language spoken in the home. As he started school and just from watching television, he picked up more and more English. When I met him we could communicate, but he was also fluent in Spanish. Because I do not speak Spanish, it was no longer the language of the house. I have no recollection of him being picked on in school, but I’m sure he felt awkward because the school he went to did not have a lot of immigrated people in it.

  Was Al a problem child?

  Ed No, not at all. Behaviorally he was great up until the teen years, and then the rebellious Al came out. From grade school into middle school he was involved in all the Little League sports and really excelled at baseball. He was a great player. He played football as well. Shortly before his grandmother moved back to Florida the two of them spent extended periods at our house, especially since my responsibilities with the company required more and more traveling. From the time I got married until we moved to Colorado, which was ten years, I traveled 50 percent-plus of the time. So his grandma spent quite a bit of her time with Al at the house. And then there were times when his mom and I would travel together, and Grandma would stay at the house with him until they moved to Florida.

  Did the two of you bond over sports?

  Ed Yes, definitely. We had season tickets to the Bears and the Blackhawks and spent a lot of time together at the games. And I was one of the many assistant coaches for the baseball team.

  Did he always show an aptitude for music?

  Ed When he was about ten we talked about music lessons, and he wanted guitar lessons. That’s when he first started with music. We got him an acoustic guitar, and he fell into that right away and was amazingly quick in being able to play pretty much anything he heard. That made discipline pretty easy, because if he misbehaved, we didn’t let him practice guitar.

  He says his strong work ethic comes from you, which is why, no matter how strung out he was, he forced himself to create and tour.

  Ed That would be accurate. Growing up, he had responsibilities. A lot of them we worked on together. But when he didn’t handle his responsibilities there were consequences. The most effective one was to take the guitar away. The other one was to take sports away. It never went much beyond that until he hit his teen years.

  Were there physical altercations between the two of you?

  Ed There were a couple. Nothing severe. It was pushing and shoving, not slugging. Wrestling, not boxing. He was never physically punished.

  Why did you move the family from Chicago to Colorado?

  Ed He was sixteen, and he was already significantly into drugs. That was part of our reason for moving. We thought we’d get him out of the ’burbs and into a healthier atmosphere.

  When did you discover he was using drugs?

  Ed He was fourteen and in his freshman year of high school, and it got progressively worse. He was hanging out with a crowd that used drugs. One of the most rebellious incidents was when his mom was in Florida. His grandma had cancer and was in the process of dying. We had an episode. He was due for a haircut, and he didn’t want to get one. I said, “Yes, we’re going to get a haircut when I get home tonight.” When I got home he wasn’t there. Two days later I got the call from the police that he had been arrested in Kentucky as a runaway hitchhiker. He was on his way to Florida to see his grandmother. And he and another kid, who wasn’t with him, were picked up at the same time hitchhiking along the interstate. They took them to the local jail and put them in a cell and started making phone calls. But they left the cell door open. So he and this other kid walked out. They were out in the street and got re-arrested, so they charged them with jail breaking too. By the time I got down there they had him for the second time, and we had to get an attorney. We got him out of it because the attorney said you can’t be jail breaking unless you use some force to do it. That was Al’s first brush with the law.

  Is there a history
of addiction in the family?

  Ed No, not at all—his family or mine. The first we were really aware of it was when they called from the school and informed us. Like most inexperienced young parents, we didn’t have the knowledge to spot it. It got progressively worse and he transferred schools. And then they found him stoned on the front lawn. When it first started we got into counseling as a family and went to regular therapy sessions, at which he was very rebellious. The psychologist suggested maybe he should be institutionalized. And then he was put into a rehab clinic for a week. But there was no dramatic change in behavior. Just before we moved to Colorado his mom and I made plans to take a vacation in Europe at the end of one of my business trips over there. Al refused to come with us. So the psychologist suggested he enter St. Mary’s right down the street, which had a program for adolescent children, which he said could be beneficial. Al chose to go there.

  Was it agonizing to watch Al go down this dangerous path?

  Ed Certainly very much when it first started. You go through a guilt trip and blame yourself. You think, “What did I do to cause this? Can’t he see what he’s doing to himself?” The move to Colorado actually turned out to be really good for Al. From 1974 to 1977 he was pretty well behaved. He wasn’t into the pills and the animal tranquilizers and all the other stuff he was doing back in Arlington Heights. I don’t question that he was smoking pot, but he had some great friends there and other relationships, and academically he pulled it together and graduated high school with grades good enough to get into college. He went into the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley with a music major and did well enough that he got accepted at the University of Colorado in Boulder. And it was as he was moving to Boulder that he didn’t quite make getting enrolled. He was living with some college kids off campus, and he said he was going to take some time off and enroll the next semester.

  Isn’t that where he got arrested for cocaine possession?

  Ed Well, one morning in November we got a call quite early in Colorado from Maggie’s younger brother who lived in Miami. It started as a general conversation. He asked how Al was doing, and I told him he was in Boulder and he was going to start school there. A half hour later the phone rings again and it was her brother again, and he said he was watching the news and he wasn’t quite sure he heard it right, which is why he called, but the TV reporter said, “Al Jourgensen from Colorado has been arrested on drug charges.” After quite a few phone calls we knew he wasn’t in Boulder; he was in Miami, locked up. He was smart because he made sure he wasn’t there when the deal went down, so they couldn’t charge him with being a part of it. We paid for the attorney and we bonded him out. Since he wasn’t physically present at the deal it was plea bargained down where he got probation out of it.

  Did you support his music career?

  Ed Absolutely, but like most parents I went, “Please, please, please get the college degree so if the music thing doesn’t work out you’ll have something to fall back on.” But he never asked us for money from the day he first left the house. He was always hard working and self-supporting.

  For years Ministry was making music, and Al was on the road playing shows and causing trouble. Did you lose contact with him during this time?

  Ed I felt we were really close even when Ministry were touring and developing. As he got more into drugs he pulled away, and there was a period in the early ’90s when he was living outside of Austin. He was clearly using heroin quite heavily. We were standing out on his deck, and he was telling me he’s off drugs and all he’s doing is a little pot once in a while. And I said, “Al, I can see your track marks. I don’t approve of it, but don’t lie to me about it. What’s the point?” After that he chose not to speak to me or my wife for more than five years. I was only able to keep track of him through his manager, who I’d call once in a while and ask, “Is he still living?”

  Do you credit Angie for saving his life?

  Ed There’s no question she saved his life. And she’s the one that reconnected us as well. We would hear from her occasionally. They were on tour and performing in our area of Florida in 2004, and she called and asked if we wanted to come by. She said there was no guarantee that he would want to see us, but it would be good if we tried. So we did, and that was the start of having communication again.

  These days Al just drinks, which is pretty good for a guy who was addicted to cocaine and heroin for twenty years . . .

  Ed No, not physically. Physically it’s harder on your body than marijuana or heroin. Of course it concerns us that he’s drinking a lot, but he’ll always have those demons until he realizes that (a) he has them, and (b) he can’t quit on his own. He’s not at that point yet that I’m aware of.

  Maybe he’s made peace with his demons and accepted them along with whatever consequences they cause?

  Ed I think he realizes to an extent what he’s doing to himself, but he still feels that he controls it—that he can choose when to drink and when not to drink.

  How do you think he got to the point where his life’s ambition almost killed him?

  Ed He almost feels like a phony because he doesn’t understand why he’s so successful with what he does. It’s a form of insecurity. He feels he can be sober when he’s not on tour, but when he goes on tour he has to adopt the persona of this other character—he can’t do it just being Al.

  The thing that has always prevented Al from being just another wasted rocker is his charm—sense of humor and heart. He’s a likeable guy.

  Ed He has always been that way, and it goes back to what we were saying before. When he was growing up he was really a great kid. Contrary to the way he remembers it, he had lots of friends and was very popular. And then when he chose a different path it’s almost like he felt guilt for having done it. And his appearance is a part of that. He’s saying, “Can you really get past my appearance and know who I really am because I’m really a neat guy?” It’s like he’s saying, “If all you’re going to do is judge my appearance, I’ll scare you away, but if you get to know me, I’m a good person. And if you manage to do that, you’ve gotten past my guard and I’ll let you in.” There’s some sort of strange thinking going on like that.

  chapter 3

  Teenage Wasteland

  Thirteen was a big year for me. I was kicking ass in baseball. It was right before high school. I got laid for the first time, and I started shooting cocaine.

  I didn’t bother with pot or booze or any gateway drugs. I jumped in with both feet. Scott’s mom was a diabetic, so she had needles. He grew up used to his mom having to inject herself with insulin every day, and we saw her do it a bunch of times so it seemed like no big deal. We knew how to tie up and find a vein, and the rest we were eager to find out. Scott started getting coke from this older guy; I don’t remember his name and I don’t know how they knew each other. We’d steal needles from his mom and shoot up. The first time we did it I was pretty tired because we had been out the night before vandalizing shit. We boiled the coke on a spoon just like we’d seen in the movies and squirted the syringe a little bit so there were no air bubbles. Even back then we somehow knew that if we injected a bubble, we would die. I found this big vein below my bicep and the needle went right in—like I’d been doing it for years. Instantly my eyes shot open. I was wide awake and felt like I could see extra clearly. I started laughing. Then it was Scott’s turn. He did the same thing. No fuss. We were into it. We didn’t shoot coke every day, just every so often—at least at first. Sometimes I’d shoot and then go to my baseball games wired out of my head. I think that’s why I was such a good player—everything was so intense.

  Scott’s hookup started getting us coke, acid, and needles. And it got to the point at which we were shooting up three or four times a day. I was walking a tightrope between being a baseball star and being a junkie. The jocks didn’t like me because I was better than most of them, and the stoners didn’t trus
t me because I was a jock. So I was between those two worlds all through middle school and high school. I wanted to be a jock on my own terms and that didn’t happen, not in the ’70s. Jocks had to be jocks—that’s it. I got thrown off my baseball team twice because I wouldn’t cut my hair. But I stuck to my guns, and they let me back because they needed wins. My hair was down to my ass. I was a complete hippie. And the guys on the team really hated the fact that I was a good player. They were really passive aggressive and obnoxious to me. We never fought, but they made it clear we weren’t friends.

  I went to my first funeral when I was thirteen. It wasn’t an aunt, uncle, or my grandmother—that came soon after. A kid on my baseball team. Danny Cadman was struck by lightning in the middle of a game, which just goes to show you how arbitrary and unfair life can be. It was fucking weird. I was playing third base, and he was at second base. It was the fourth inning, and the other team had a guy on first. So I was keeping a close watch on second in case he tried to steal. The sky was overcast but it wasn’t raining, then out of nowhere, KAPOW! A blinding, jagged bolt of lightning crashes down from overhead, and Danny hits the ground, smoldering. I was the first one over there. His flesh was burned black; there was no question that he was dead. Maybe God was actually trying to hit me and had bad aim or something.

  Danny was always jealous of me because he wanted to be the star of the team and I was a lot better. But everyone on the team went to the funeral, so I went too. All I remember about it was the way he was dressed. A mortician had cut his hair, and he was wearing a suit and tie inside this little coffin box. But the freakiest thing of all was that the family buried him with his watch, which was still ticking. It was an old Timex. Back then the company’s slogan was “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.” I’m not sure a dead kid in a box is what they had in mind when some cocky advertising executive came up with that slogan. I don’t know if Danny had it on when the lightning hit him, but as we were sitting there paying our last respects, I heard, “Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.” That still haunts me to this day. I thought, “That’s going into earth with him, six feet underground, and it’s going to keep ticking until the battery runs out.” I wondered if you put your ear to the ground if you’d be able to hear the muffled tick of Danny Cadman’s rotting corpse. I never went back to find out.