BURNED - Living Through the 80s and 90s as a Rock Guitarist

by Bobby DeVito

  I could hear the frustration in his voice. He was right, of course, but I was still feeling the euphoric high of being “on the lam”. Having been clean and sober for 5 weeks now, I was beginning to feel things again, and I realized what I liked: feeling good. When you get to the root of it, as my good friend and mentor Bob G. says, we all like to “feel good”. Feeling good can drive most of our thoughts and actions. He also liked to remind me that “feelings aren’t facts, and thoughts aren’t actions”. Obviously it was the opposite for me, I had acted with very little thought.

  It was my first time hanging out in Santa Monica. I spent the first 48 hours in an intense relationship with Nicole that just ended suddenly like a car hitting a telephone pole. Once she was back to normal, she hopped in her sweet new Volvo 760 and hit the road. I ended up writing a song about it, and speak of it as my “LA relationship”. At least I didn’t have to get a divorce.

  Mike and I hung out constantly in Santa Monica, shopping on the Third Street Promenade, eating at all the restaurants, and watching TV at the hotel. To his credit, he was managing to stay clean, but I knew he was jonesing. I am lucky that I have never done heroin, but that is a “yet”. Everything you haven’t done is a “yet”if you’re an addict/alcoholic. I am sure that I would like heroin just as much as all my other addict friends, and I’m addicted to nicotine already. Santa Monica in late August was beautiful and temperate, and Mike and I planned our next move. We wanted to start a band, and get a house in Santa Monica and convert the garage into a rehearsal studio. Mike discussed getting various out of work LA rock guys like Steven Adler and noted singer Scott Wieland to jam with us. Jamming together with Mike, he showed me some riffs and ideas that he had since the AIC days, nice dark powerful riffs that appealed to my heavy guitar tendencies.

  One night, he was pacing the hotel room madly. “We got to get a cab, right now!” he demanded. “Where are we going?” I asked. He just kept pacing, and I called a cab from the front desk. As we sped away, he shouted at the driver “Take me to 6th and Alvarado”.

  We arrived about 30 minutes later at some laudromat convenience store strip mall sort of joint, and he went and did his business. I knew the monkey was back. Later Mike had the taxi driver stop at a Burger King, and he went inside to shoot up in the public bathroom.

  He seemed to maintain, but I knew I was in trouble. Mike decided that we should head to Seattle and grab some gear and instruments and his custom 300zx, and bring the stuff back down to Santa Monica. It sounded like a good plan to me, I was beginning to be sketchy about remaining in LA. So we packed our suitcases and headed to LAX. Arriving at SEATAC airport a few hours later, we were greeted by Mike’s dad, an affable ex-Marine looking guy. Mike’s dad was a thin, wiry, tough looking man’s man who had the look of a retired Ranger or Spec Warfare guy. We headed to Mike’s house in Burien, a twisted little suburb of Seattle. It was the sticks of North Carolina, only Northwest style.

  The first week in dark little Burien was uneventful. We visited Mike’s mom, and went through a basement full of Alice in Chains memorabilia. Mike gave me a guitar that had been given to him by Steve Vai, some elaborately carved monstrosity that ONLY Steve Vai could have pulled off. It played exceptionally well though, so I was digging it. I have to admit, at this point I was a bit star-struck. Mike had boxes of memorabilia, and stories that went along with most of it. He told me of their Rock in Rio appearance on MTV, and how he had nearly OD’ed before the performance. I saw a bootleg copy of this performance just last week, and marveled at his abilities – he still rocked pretty damn well. You can say what you want about Mike, but he can lay down some of the meanest bass on the planet. Mike Inez was the obvious no-brainer choice to replace Starr, but he never had that dark sound, that missing element that had been there in the first few AIC albums.

  We picked out some gear, and basically hung around his house all day. I began to notice some sort of “delivery guy” that came by every day around noon. Mike would then take a long afternoon nap, sometimes with lit cigarettes still burning between the fingers. I had called Terry Kirkman one day on the way to the grocery store from a pay phone. He was furious with me, and I tried to defend myself and said that I would be OK. Terry had planned for me to finish my 30 days at Daniel Freeman, and then go on to a residential program in Los Angeles. I had paid a visit to the house, and did not like what I saw from the first entrance. As I walked in the front door, I was immediately verbally assaulted by one of the “clients” who said “You have to take off your shoes. TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!”

  Some people in recovery begin to focus intently upon other areas of their lives. Up until then, they have basically had this sick focus upon getting high and drunk. So when they clean up, they begin to obsess over anything and everything. It gets almost comical in rehab situations like halfway houses.There will be outright wars and internal affairs committee investigations into whether yogurt containers should be on the shelf, or in the door of the refrigerator. One thing is for sure – if you were a drunk asshole and had gotten sober, you were still an asshole. Sometimes even more so. This tool of an inmate came up to me and got me to take my shoes off. “If we break the rules of the house, we have to spend an hour writing an essay about our error” he said shakily.

  I was ready to write an essay about how he could fuck off. At this point in my recovery, I was convinced I had a drug problem, but I was just not like the most of these people I met. I had never had a DUI, and had never been in jail. I had never used needles, and was not an abusive pillpopper. I did get hooked on cocaine though, that was obvious. But, as Bob Uzzo says, I had still not heard that distinctive “pop” sound that occurs when your head comes out of your ass. Terry had offered me essentially a year recovery program, carefully planned out to maximize what MAP could offer me. He had worked long and hard at making my recovery work, and I had pissed on his efforts. He had a right to be pissed off. But at least he still took my calls.

  Over the course of several more weeks, the interior of Mike’s house was like some weird out-take of “Goundhog Day”. Same guy came over around noon, and Mike would zone out in his junkie reverie. I would sit in the backyard, writing songs and polishing riffs. I knew I had to get Mike back into treatment if we were ever going to do any music together. I began to broach the subject to him gradually, and we booked another detox clinic in LA for him to attend. I booked plane tickets, and for three days straight he balked at leaving. Finally on the fourth day, I managed to get him to the airport. We checked our bags, and lined up to board the plane. As we waited in line, I could feel him behind me, fidgeting nervously. After a while I noticed that the fidgeting had ceased, and I turned to check on him. All I could see was an action shot of his rear end as he ran from the airport at a fast jog. There I was, with only $500 in my pocket, both of our luggage checked, and waiting to board the plane to LA. What would you do? They say the definition of insanity is “repeating the same actions expecting different results”. I opted to head to LA to an unknown future, instead of sitting around Burien watching Mike kill himself. He’s truly a great guy, and one of the best rock bass players ever, and I wish him well. But I had to do something, and off to LA I flew.

  Arriving in at LAX, I had nowhere to go and few people to call. I ended up hanging out in the International Flights section of the airport, as it was open 24 hours. I recently saw the movie “The Terminal”, and I could completely understand the plight of a man stuck in an airport for an extended period. I met some very interesting people from all over the world, and picked up a few dollars playing solo acoustic to bored terminal residents. My grandfather always said there were three reasons to take the guitar out of the case: to make money, learn something, or have fun. I’ll play and sing to anyone anywhere, and this ability has fed me for many years.The terminal experience was quite unusual, and after 24 hours of trying, I finally managed to reach someone. The beautiful blonde Nicole, my 48 hour LA relationship girl, came to fetch me from LAX. She took me into Santa Monica a
nd I shopped around for a hotel, finally settling on a trashy little weekly rental joint on Pico Blvd. Nicole was somewhat happy to see me, but there was no re-kindling of our rehab romance. She could have at least given me a pity fuck.

  I sat in my dingy hotel room surroundings and took stock of what I had. My acoustic electric guitar was with me, and enough clothes to get through a week. I had $250 left after paying the weekly rent. The proprieter of this hotel was a little old Jewish guy named Sid. He seemed happy to have me there, and kept an eye on my room for me when I was gone. I had noticed a plethora of street performers in Santa Monica, and also noticed they were making a fair amount of money. I visited Truetone Music and bought a little battery-powered PA system, and took my last $50 to Santa Monica City Hall and procured the required street performer’s permit. The city has a very progressive stance towards street performers, one that other cities like New Orleans should take a hard look at. In many towns in this country, you can get arrested for simply breaking out a guitar and playing and singing for donations.

  The next morning, I woke early and headed to Starbucks. This was the one luxury I allowed myself, a slow morning at the coffeeshop with strong coffee and sweets. I would read the paper at the outside tables and watch life going by on Pico Blvd. Sometimes I would eavesdrop into the varied conversational life dramas unfolding around me. Usually the paper was more interesting, and after my long morning I headed back to get my gear from the hotel room. I had bought a small luggage carrier, so I could wheel my stuff onto the bus to get to the 3rd Street Promenade. Arriving at my destination, I set up my gear and somewhat timidly began to perform. After a few hours, I had managed to make around $70, and I was impressed. The city stipulated that we perform in 2 hour shifts at various locations on the Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier, so I would typically do three 2 hour shifts per day. I sometimes began to think about having a beer or two, but had still managed to stay 100% clean and sober. These were extreme times, and they demanded unfailing attention and thrift to make it.

  I managed to make friends in various places. Joe worked at an indie coffee house down by the Promenade, and he was an absolutely gorgeous Italian guy from Brooklyn. Like everyone else working in the hospitality industry in LA, he was an actor slash model looking for a break. Joe would hook me up with a free coffee and pack of cigarettes a few times a week, and I would stuff his tip jar with some of my ones from my shifts. Hospitality people have to take care of each other, we can’t rely on all you “straight”people to take care of us. I also began to be solicited by the managers of the various al fresco style restaurants on the Promenade. Some managers would tip me $20, offer me a free meal, and send me out beverages if I would perform by their restaurant in the afternoons. I began to be pretty well known on the strip as one of the better performers, and made really decent money for being essentially a homeless guy.

  Playing on the Promenade drew some quite unusual acquaintances. Star gazing was a fun occupation, and I garnered tips and praise from a lot of cool celebrities like Christian Slater, Madonna, Shannon Tweed, Rande Gerber, and more. The local street kids basically left me alone, and I tried to throw a few dollars at some of the other homeless people if I had a good day. I spent nearly 3 months there in Santa Monica doing nothing but writing songs and street performing. Believe it or not, I actually got solicited by several major label industry cogs who would hear me performing while they were dining al fresco eating their $19 salads. Like many of the best times in your life, it seemed to be hectic and unsettling and crazy at the time. But looking back, I had never felt more alive and on the edge. And I was clean and sober for the first time in nearly 20 years. I don’t recommend it to anyone, however.

  Towards the end of the fall, Santa Monica had started getting cold. That’s one of the inherent dangers of street performing, weather conditions. If it’s raining, you basically fucked. Hope you saved enough money from yesterday, player. I had booked the New Year’s Eve gig back at the James Joyce in Tampa for the most money I had ever made for a solo acoustic performance, and knew I needed to get back to Tampa. It would be back to Hyde Park, back to my friend Curtis’s couch, back to all the places I used to use. I booked my flight, played the last few days on the Promenade saying goodbye to all my friends and fellow street performers, and headed back to Tampa Bay.

  Arriving at Tampa International, I was met by Curtis and we grabbed my ratty luggage and headed to Hyde Park. Getting back to his place was quite unsettling, as only months before I had been sitting here on that same couch, afraid that I was going to have a heart attack from all the coke I had done. My first few weeks in Tampa were uneventful, and I managed to make it all the way until this Christmas Holiday weekend before I slipped and had a Guinness…which led to another Guinness….which led to a shot of Tullamore Dew and a Guinness… you know this story. It’s a broken record. Addicts and Alcoholics get stuck into these “loops” that just keep repeating. It’s Groundhog Day again. By New Year’s Eve, I was drinking with the best of them again. The Program says alcoholism is a “progressive” disease – that you will pick up exactly where you left off, and get even worse every time you pick up again. I was doing my research and development on this, and found it to be sadly true. I can’t have just one, it leads to ten. And after making all that money on New Year’s Eve, in my drunken state I felt like I could “reward” myself with a nice big handful of cocaine. I was off and running just like I was before, but with a renewed vengeance.

  The main problem with recovery is simple – recovery is like herpes. Once you are exposed to it, it remains in your system for life. No matter what you do, if you have been exposed to the logic and rhetoric of the AA and NA program, every time you use for the rest of your life gets colored through these new lenses of perception. It doesn’t stop many people from going back out and using, but boy does it fuck up their buzz. You can never entirely drink away the still small voices in your head, but you can bludgeon them pretty effectively with drugs.

  It was during this time after I got back to Tampa that I renewed my relationship with Jen.

  Jen had a brilliant intellect, but a chip on her shoulder because she hadn’t ever gotten around to finishing college. Heroin addiction a few years prior had cancelled that. I always admired her for getting clean, she simply up and moved back to Ohio, and did it herself, white-knuckling her way to sobriety. And she had been clean ever since. But she still had that heroin addict bravado. You can always tell the heroin addicts at the NA meetings. They “clique off ” together, and look down on us poor cokeheads and crackheads. Pillpoppers fall somewhere in the middle. Jen and I continued our flirtation, until one night around the holidays when we finally called each other’s bluff. I had gotten a room at the brand new Hilton in Ybor City, and we finally spent the night together, although she was still living with Rob. We got along quite fabulously at first in bed, but had to awake the next morning and depart all too soon. She had to get home to Rob, and I lazed around the room until housekeeping kicked me out. It was better than the couch at Curtis’s place.

  That year, we had the Super Bowl in Tampa. We all had an amazing week, money-wise. Tons of alcohol crazed football fans had descended into Ybor City, and we had some of the most crowded nights I had ever seen at the James Joyce. At that time, the staff had become my family, and we ate together, played cards together, and cooked steaks out on the grille on the roof of the bar. At the end of that week on Sunday night, we had closed the bar as usual, kicking out everyone that wasn’t part of our “inner circle”. We all at around and drank pints of Guinness and counted our money. Jen had come over from across the street, and I was feeling a bit crazy about her. In the last week, we had done some crazy things, having sex in the office of the Joyce, having sex in my car parked on 8th Avenue in Ybor City in broad daylight, basically anywhere we could meet for a quick interlude. She was still living with Rob, however, and was having a hard time thinking of how to break up with him. I looked at Jen with a glint in my eye and grasped her h
and.

  “Let’s get out of here for a few days. We’re both tired, and we made a lot of money. Let’s go hit Savannah for a few nights, do some drinking and relax. Savannah is beautiful and you’ll love it”

  She looked at me pensively and replied “I don’t know, it would be hard to explain to Rob”

  Somehow I managed to convince her to go, she made up some cover story for Rob, and off we went to Savannah. Arriving there after a 6 hour drive, we got a room at a local Day’s Inn, and headed downtown. We had a lovely dinner at one of the many riverside seafood places that have been there for over a century. Savannah is a great town, always reminded me of a cleaner New Orleans. And the “low country boil” is one of the best seafood dishes I have ever had anywhere in the world. After dinner, we headed to a local club called “The Velvet Elvis”. This place is a punk rock Irish pub, with lots of touring alternative and punk rock bands. A hug velvet Elvis portrait hangs behind the stage, and the bar walls are practically plastered with band flyers. The place reminds me of a redneck CBGB’s with better beer selection. We met the owner, and told him as a joke we were there to get married. He immediately placed a bottle of Tullamore Dew in front of us, and gave us free Guinnness for the rest of that evening. We drank most of that bottle, and the owner married us right there in the bar. It was a spectacle, and the locals found it all hilarious. I drove us home drunkenly, and Jen was hanging her head out of the window like a dog, puking all the way back to the hotel. Not a very auspicious start to a marriage.