by Scott Ian
A second later, KISS started played the song I had heard on the car radio, and my jaw dropped. I turned around and said, “We have to go to the record store right now! I have to have this album! KISS, KISS, KISS!”
I’m sure four million other eleven-year-olds right at that moment were doing the same thing. It projected into our fucking nerve center and we were plugged in. It made sense. We were programmed and that was it. I was a KISS maniac for three years, from ’75 to ’78. I loved other music, too, but for those three years, it was all about KISS.
They were larger than life. Other bands sang about being famous, touring, and scoring chicks. Zeppelin sang about—who knows what the fuck Zeppelin sang about, wood nymphs and sprites—and the Stones and the blues guys wrote about how bad chicks were and how rough life could be. I already knew how rough life could be, and I hadn’t discovered chicks yet. KISS was all about escaping, blasting to another planet, and never looking back.
The night in 1975 when my parents sat us down in the house in Long Island to tell us they were finally splitting up is as memorable to me as Anthrax’s first sold-out show. I recall them saying, “It’s not you guys. We both love you very much. But we’re not happy and we need to be apart.” I felt a huge sense of relief and was actually happy. Jason wasn’t any more upset than I was. “Well. Who’s going to give us allowance?” was all he had to say. Our main concern was whether we were still going to see our dad much. I had the greatest sense of relief knowing they weren’t going to be screaming at each other 24/7. My mom, Jason, and I moved back to Queens, literally six blocks from where we lived before. It was the best. All of a sudden I was going to seventh grade with all my friends from first, second, and third grade. Long Island was like this weird other world, and now I was back in the city and I knew all these people! I was thirteen and riding the bus to school—and smoking weed and drinking and listening to rock and roll. Everything changed for the better. My mom was working nine to five. She wasn’t around, so I was looking after my brother. We had total freedom. It was amazing. At the same time, I knew I had to do whatever it took to get out of the Boroughs. I didn’t want to be in Queens the rest of my life. I wanted to escape and make my own mark on the world.
The same year, my maternal grandmother died of cancer. It was too much for my mom and she had a breakdown. There was lots of crying, yelling, and door slamming. She started drinking more. One night Dad went to pick her up from a friend’s party where she had gotten completely wasted. On the drive home Mom opened the door and tried to jump out of the car and kill herself. Dad kept hold of the wheel with one hand, leaned over the seat, and in one fluid motion yanked her back into the car and punched her in the face as hard as he could. She slumped over unconscious, and he was able to close the back door. Though it’s not what my mom wanted at the time, he definitely saved her life that night. Instead of driving her home he took her directly to a mental hospital and checked her into rehab.
While my mom was away, my dad came to live with us. We didn’t know the details. All we knew was that she was sick and my dad would stay with us while my mom was in the hospital getting better. I was going on twelve, and those six weeks my mom was away were pretty great. My dad left early in the morning to go to work and didn’t come home until seven o’clock, so my brother and I would go on a fucking tear. It was like the inmates were running the asylum. I’d empty small Scope and Listerine bottles and fill them with my mom’s vodka so my friends and I could drink it on the ten-mile bus ride to school every day.
Also, I’d steal my dad’s weed and spark up between classes. He kept these rolled pin joints in a tin of Sucrets. I would have thought he would have seen that some were missing and confronted me, but he never did.
My friends would giggle like idiots when they smoked, but it never affected me. It seemed like I was immune, but that was great because everyone thought, “Fuck, Scott can handle his high.” That was good for some street cred.
When my mom got back to the house, things changed but not that much. She saw a therapist every week named Dr. Rice, and she thought he channeled the word of God. She applied everything he said to her, and I guess he was good for her because she became a lot more mentally balanced and only screamed at us for no reason half as often. She went right back to work to support the three of us, which must have been a chore. When you’re a kid, you don’t realize how much your parents sacrifice to put food on the table. While we were outside having fun, she was working her ass off doing secretarial work and hating life. But my mom’s long hours meant more freedom for Jason and me. Some people who grew up latchkey kids become insecure and depressed later in life. I never understood that. Being on our own gave me a feeling of independence, developed my self-confidence, and most importantly meant there was no one there to tell me what I could and couldn’t do.
We would get up and go to school then we’d come home and make sure the dishes were done and the apartment was clean. As long as that happened, we could go out and play unsupervised until dinnertime. I got into a little trouble, but I could never do anything really bad because I always had my brother to look after. I knew I’d be fucked if I got dragged off by police somewhere and he was left by himself on the playground. I loved my brother and I think that’s what kept me from ever going too far with alcohol and drugs. I’d drink enough to get a buzz, but I always had my wits about me. And I felt cool and rebellious, like I was one of those tough kids in a TV after-school special about how to stay out of trouble and avoid temptation. I loved temptation, but I knew where to draw the line. With a few exceptions that became my MO. Having Jason to watch over didn’t just keep me in line; it gave me a sense of responsibility and helped mold me into the person I would become. I had this very important role and I didn’t want to fuck up.
Some kids I hung out with were already getting in trouble with cops, whether it was shoplifting or vandalism. Granted, many had way worse lives than I did. Their parents would beat the shit out of them. A lot of them were poorer than we were and were getting shitfaced all the time at age thirteen. They’d drink beer in cans out of paper bags and look for fights. I thought, “That doesn’t seem like fun to me. I can already kinda see where it’s going. They’re just going to become their parents.”
Many of those people still live in Bayside; they never got out. They became firemen or did construction. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just wasn’t what I wanted. And most of them became alcoholics. I’m not judging them. A lot of rock stars are alcoholics. I just knew early on that wasn’t going to be me. I heard some of the problem kids who got busted by cops for fighting, stealing, or vandalism ended up in reform school. I didn’t know what that was, but I knew because of the way people talked about it that I didn’t want to end up there. I was like, “Fuck all that shit, I’m already having fun.” I didn’t need real trouble to get my kicks.
Most of the really screwed-up kids we hung out with knew where I stood and that I wasn’t going to break store windows or put lit firecrackers in anyone’s pockets. I’d egg cars with them, steal comic books and sodas from the Grand Union to prove myself, but I never committed any real vandalism or violence. When I learned how to sneak in and out of the store undetected and what the best route of escape was, I’d rip off six-packs of beer, which definitely kept me in with the cool crowd. I had my purpose. And I was always a smart-ass. I could bust balls as well as anyone, which kept me off the wedgie and beatdown list that kids my size usually wound up on. Even the biggest fuckups liked me. I never judged them, and even though I was a little, tiny kid, no one fucked with me because I was always friends with the real crazies.
There was a guy named Kenny who used to beat the shit out of kids who looked at him the wrong way. But Kenny thought I was cool because I made him laugh. I think I lived vicariously through him and some of his screwed-up friends. When other kids from the neighborhood who weren’t part of our cool gang would try to ride their bikes through the shortcuts in the
shopping center back lots, these delinquent kids would knock over their bikes, fuck with them, and shake them down. If you didn’t pay the twenty-five-cent tax to ride through, they’d cut your tires and rough you up. The day after Kenny fucked with some of these kids, I’d see them in school, and even though they were way bigger than me, they’d look at me and run away. I was always the shortest kid in class. I couldn’t have hurt a fly, but I was friends with all the right people, always. No one laid a finger on me.
Since we didn’t want to be at home, my brother and I practically lived in the streets. When my mom would yell at us and tell us we were turning into juvenile delinquents, I’d say, “Why can’t we just go live with Dad?” because my dad was always calm and centered. Also, he didn’t judge us like she did, probably because we didn’t live with him and he wasn’t working two jobs to make ends meet. We saw him twice a month on weekends and every Wednesday for dinner, which we were visibly excited about. That bummed my mom out sometimes because she was an unbelievably stressed-out single woman working her ass off for us, and we didn’t give a shit. We just wanted to hang out with Dad. The rest of the time we did what we needed to do around the house and then stayed out of her way to go do what we loved.
Chapter 3
Rock and Roll All Nite
When summer came and school let out, we went to a sleep-away camp in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, called Camp Cayuga. That was great because it got me away from the friction of being at home and I got to hang out with other kids and play sports and go swimming. I also had my first experiences with girls. Where I grew up in Bay Terrace, most of the girls I knew from seventh to twelfth grade were rich Jewish brats, stereotypical JAPs. My family was barely even middle class and we lived in a very small two-bedroom apartment, so there was no dating for me. Those girls wouldn’t look my way twice. But at Camp Cayuga, everyone just partied and fooled around. It almost didn’t matter what you looked like as long as you weren’t radically deformed. And the counselors didn’t give a shit. They’d all get high as soon as they were done for the day, so we ran around like maniacs. I hooked up with a lot of girls while I was there. I never went all the way with any of them, but there was a lot of kissing and, in the parlance of the time, heavy petting.
I was twelve and a half the first time I had an orgasm with a chick. Her name was Julie. We were both young and didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but nature took its course and we figured out what to do, short of fucking. None of the girls there would have sex, including Julie, because they were worried about getting pregnant. And everyone knew that we were just having fun and nothing would get too serious. Once Julie said, “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?” And I went, “Well, I live in New York and you live in Pennsylvania. Probably not.”
Even after camp, I was a happy kid. Some people are devastated and depressed when their parents separate, but when my folks went their separate ways in 1975 I had so much music to listen to and I was playing baseball and hanging out with friends and skateboarding—I couldn’t have been happier. Without question, 1977 was the golden year of my youth. I was thirteen, the Yankees won the World Series, and I had my Bar Mitzvah, so I got all these presents and checks. I totally cheated my way through the ceremony. I didn’t know Hebrew because I didn’t go to Hebrew school. I could have gone, but my friends who went all hated it so much. And I went to enough of their Bar Mitzvahs to know I didn’t want to be up there singing for three hours. I was like, “I’m not going to more school. I’d rather ride my skateboard and play baseball.”
The thing is, it was really important for my grandfather that I have a Bar Mitzvah, so my parents got me a tutor and he wrote my Torah portion out in English. “Buh-ruch-ah-tah, Ado-nay . . .” It was phonetically transliterated on a paper for me to read. It took about seven minutes, but that was good enough for my grandfather. He was happy and that’s really all that mattered. The timing of my Bar Mitzvah was perfect. I had just gotten really into skateboarding. The sport was in its second wave of popularity. The initial era was in the sixties when everyone had these tiny little wooden decks with wheels that were made out of rock. It was really primitive. With the advent of the urethane wheels in the midseventies, it turned into a completely different sport because you could maneuver the boards with greater precision and perform stunts that required real skill.
I got a board from a mail-order place called Val-Surf that advertised in the back of skateboarding magazines. I ordered a G&S Fibreflex board with Road Rider 4 wheels and Tracker trucks. That was a big deal back then. I traded up the Road Rider wheels when Kryptonics came out. My brother and my friends all had skateboards as well, and we would do whatever we could to emulate the pictures of skaters in the magazines. There were no videos back then. You couldn’t see skating on TV. You’d just see a photo of a guy doing a trick and try to figure out what the hell he was doing. Most of the time, we’d ride down the hills in Queens as fast as we could like maniacs, destroying ourselves, falling off our boards after hitting potholes at thirty miles an hour and tearing up our arms and legs. We’d wear elbow and knee pads and we’d have jeans on, but if you fell at top speed you could rip straight through a thick pair of jeans. Skateboarding took a front seat to baseball at that point in my life. Every day as soon as school was over, that’s all I was doing, and then when school was out I was doing it all day.
After my Bar Mitzvah I took all the cash I made, about $1,100, and bought flights for my brother and me to Los Angeles, where we rode our skateboards all summer. My mom’s friend Bobbie Zuckerberg let us stay with her in Laguna Beach because there were no skate parks in Queens in 1977, and they were really popular in LA. We were a few blocks from the ocean, which was amazing for two kids from Queens. My only concern was that I didn’t know how I was going to be able to follow the Yankees while we were in California. I solved that little dilemma one of the first nights we were there. I sat on the porch with a transistor radio and listened to the Angels games because every thirty minutes or so they gave scores from around the league.
As much as I cared about the Yankees, being in LA was all about the skating, and there was plenty to be had. Bobbie was a nurse, so every morning on her way to the hospital where she worked, she dropped us off at this skate park in Irvine, and then she picked us up again in the afternoon when her shift was over. That was our day care. I was thirteen, my brother was ten; I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the summer. We learned so much about riding in pools and on these banks because we saw what kids in California were doing. We were figuring out all these street tricks, and we couldn’t wait to show our new skills to our friends back home. Then on our last day there, I broke my wrist.
I had ridden six or seven feet from the ground up the wall of this bowl, and when I went to turn my 180 to come back down the wall, my back foot slipped off my board. I somehow landed sideways on top of the board and my left arm was underneath me. I heard an audible pop, saw a blinding red flash, and felt an intensely sharp pain in my wrist, which was already starting to swell. My brother ran up to me, and I said, “Find my board!” because when I landed on it, it kicked out from under me and went rolling away. He found it, then we called Bobbie at work, and she picked us up and brought us back to the hospital. They x-rayed my arm and saw I had a fractured wrist. They decided not to set it since I was flying back to New York the next day and they were worried about swelling. They wrapped the arm and splinted it and told me I had to go to the doctor to get it set as soon as I got back to New York.
The flight home really sucked. My arm was killing me and I just had to gut it out. The next day we went to the doctor to get it set, and he looked at me and said, “Take a deep breath, this is going to hurt.” Then he grabbed my arm and pulled it. For about fifteen seconds I was in agony, and then the pain passed and the doctor put a cast on my arm. I was in the cast for six weeks, and that’s when I realized skateboarding wasn’t my priority anymore. The idea that I couldn’t play guitar for six weeks was mo
re unbearable than the thought of not skating.
When the cast came off, the first thing I did was pick up my guitar. I kept skateboarding but never above my pay grade. As much as I loved guitar, though, I still hadn’t made the connection that it would be the tool for my future livelihood.
That defining moment came at the end of 1977. On December 14 I saw KISS at Madison Square Garden. I got the tickets at the Ticketron at Moonshine Records, right inside the Bay Terrace shopping center across from where I lived. You couldn’t order tickets online or even over the phone back then. You had to wait in line along with all the other fans, some of whom had camped out all night. We got up really early in the morning and went right over to buy KISS tickets for all three shows. Even so, our seats were kinda crappy—the back of the floor behind the sound desk. I still have the tour program and the shirt I bought the first night. Of course, the shirt doesn’t fit anymore but it’s a great souvenir. Tickets were $6.50. I paid for them myself, and it was the first time my mom let me go to a show with my friends without my dad or uncle chaperoning me. Being off the leash only added to the excitement.
We took the train in. The spectacle of the whole show was completely insane. We were surrounded by 18,000 screaming maniacs. It seemed unbelievably loud, and it took me a few songs to even understand what I was hearing. But I was still losing my mind, jumping up and down with my friends. Once my ears adjusted to the volume, I was completely blown away by how great the band sounded. Gene blew fire, which I could see, but they didn’t have video screens back then, and we were too far back to see him spit blood. But just being in that room with that energy was a life-affirming experience.
I left the arena with my friends to take the steps down to the Long Island Railroad back to Queens, and I said out loud, “This is what I’m gonna do. That’s it. I’m gonna be in a band like KISS.”