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

by Bobby DeVito

  Yeah, but at least I’m still alive, I think to myself. Jen came back across the state in her sister’s bright red new pickup truck to bring me back. We were already arguing on the way home. I knew that she would immediately become all militant about everything I did, and she had a right to. I had lied to her, stolen from her, ignored her, and was about the worst possible husband I could be. I had to go back and face my parents after lying to them about money that I had ostensibly borrowed to “pay my rent”, which was spent on yet more drugs. All of my friends knew I was fucked up this time. But I had reached 90 days of clean and sober time, which was longer than I had ever made it, and I was determined to succeed, despite Bob’s prognosis.

  Arriving back in the “big Guava”, I went back to live in Jen’s house in Seminole Heights. I was used to living in Hyde Park, and the run-down drug infested neighborhood that she had chosen to live in that bordered the infamous Nebraska Avenue really tested my patience. Her house was less than a mile from the infamous North Tampa ‘hood on Florida Avenue by the Hillsboro River, where I used to cop my drugs. I could have walked there faster than I could have driven. I began to search the classified ads for a job, as I had decided it would be best to not work full time in bars playing music for the immediate future. Luckily, through an online service my resume had caught the eye of a music instrument case company that had just formed in Tampa. I interviewed with the owner, and somehow managed to talk my way into a really great job with god pay and a percentage of the company profit. It was truly a gift to be in this position, and I immediately set to work building a network of dealers for these cases all over the USA. I worked long ten hour days, with an hour commute each way, so I basically worked, ate, went to a meeting, and slept. I never quite connected with any meetings in Tampa, and eventually stopped going. Work had become my new focus, and it was welcome to me. I would rather be at work than be home with Jen, and the money was quite welcome as she was in the late stages of pregnancy and could not work. The two of us had reached some sort of unspoken understanding, there was little intimacy, just basically two room mates sharing a place. I was happy to be able to provide for her during this time, as I had already put her through so much hell earlier in the pregnancy.

  Somehow I managed to become pretty successful with my new career. The case company had a great product that was priced at half the competition, so the music stores loved them. We had so many orders that spring that the overseas Chinese factory couldn’t produce them fast enough, and were screwing up the ones they did get produced quite frequently. Having had been a professional musician for over 20 years, I knew music store owners from all around the country, and managed to convinced many of my friends to place large orders for cases. When our production did not meet the demand, I had day after day of frustrating phone calls from my soon-to-be former friends. My boss, conversely, wanted me to focus on more new dealers and more new orders. I just didn’t have the faith that the factory would ever get it together, and in a fit of frustration gave them my two weeks’ notice. I was completely sales-burnt, after having been managing a network of 50 sales reps, and trying to grow the company as fast as possible. It was a great learning experience, and I am grateful to have worked with them, but I was done. They didn’t let me work my two weeks, so I packed my stuff and went back to the house.

  September 11th happened to me like it did to all of us one morning. I was already at the office when I got the call from my younger brother. I had several NYC friends of mine that worked in the World Trade Center for various financial companies, and as I saw the carnage happen, I immediately closed the office and headed immediately home to sit in a state of shock and awe for hours, wondering what was next. It affected me deeply, and made my problems and struggles seem quite insignificant. We were going to be at war again.

  My daughter Celia Grace was born that Jan 1st. I named her Grace in memory of Jeff Buckley’s first album. Jeff had made quite an impression on me years ago and his untimely death haunted me. We expected her to come out on New Year’s Eve, but she decided to keep us waiting until the afternoon on New Year’s Day. It was a peak experience, and I was there for all of it. Due to my mother’s medical background and all of my own time in hospitals over the years, I was uncommonly comfortable during the delivery, assisting the midwife and taking the freshly-born little thing into the NICU for washing and clearing the eyes. It was a beautiful time, only slightly marred by some typical bickering by Jen’s family. Women all around seem to lose their minds when one of their own is giving birth.

  At that point, we were doing OK financially, and I started calling my musical contacts around town looking for gigs. I immediately began to play with a friend’s swing-style blues band, and started working 4-5 nights a week in bars. I still managed to stay sober, and enjoyed playing music again. It was also nice to have some attentive female attention, as I had absolutely none of that at home. The band played gigs all over Tampa, Clearwater, St Petersburg, and Sarasota, and had a good solid local following. I wasn’t overly thrilled with playing strictly one kind of music, but a gig’s a gig. I knew that I didn’t want to live with Jen anymore, and now that Celia had been born and was 100% healthy and beautiful, I wanted out. Jen had always said that if I ever used again, she would divorce me.

  According to the program, one is not supposed to make “any major changes” during the first year of recovery. I had already made about six by the point I came to the end of my first year. I didn’t get to walk up at the meeting and get the shiny metal year AA medallion, because one night at a gig, I had just had it.

  We were playing a private corporate event at the Stouffer Vinoy Hotel in St Pete, a swanky upscale place that was situated on the bay close to the famous St Pete Pier and the Dali Museum. Once again, the bandleader had given me a talking-to regarding my stage clothes. I hated dressing the part to be in a “swing band”, but the clients had paid good money for that, and they wanted to see a bunch of us up their in baggy suits banging out the classics. I felt pretty damn sorry for myself at this point

  – I was Bobby DeVito, the guitar player who had recorded LVX Nova and had scored a record deal by sheer force of will. I had toured and performed with some leading blues musicians, and had played to crowds of 20,000 people in Europe. Yet here I was in some borrowed, ill-fitting suit playing bad swing music to drunk convention attendees. I bellied up to the bar and ordered a beer. Fuck it.

  Later that night, after getting paid in cash from the bandleader, I headed straight to the “one stop shopping” district in South Tampa and bought as much coke as I could afford.

  When I didn’t arrive home that night, or the next day, Jen figured out what was happening pretty quickly. She took Celia and ran to my parents house, pleading her case. I was an off-the-rails drug addict, an she was concerned for Celia’s welfare. Great, now she has a hostage.

  When I finally arrived to the empty house and Jen’s brief angry note, I knew I had to take action. I called Terry at MAP and told him what had happened. He arranged for me to go back to Sobrenity for another month, and I packed up my car and drove to Ft Lauderdale. As soon as I left, Jen sold my guitars, and even a couple of guitars that had been loaned to me by a lifelong friend. Bob was not surprised to see me back, and even Capo still remembered me. The huge wolfbeast had become fond of me during my last stay, and would swim in the pool with me when Bob let him out.

  “I told you – prognosis poor” said Bob as he helped me get my luggage.

  “Fuck you, Uzzo” I said back. But deep down I knew he was right. I had not kept up my regimen of meetings. I had gone back to Tampa against his wishes. I had done nearly everything he had told me not to. Typical addict behavior. I had made it through a year of some severe stressors, and had done pretty well, making good money at my job, and then later working with the band. I had weathered the momentous morning and week afterward on September 11th, when our whole country gasped in unison. And then predictably, at a gig, I just snapped and started drinking again. And tha
t led immediately to harder drug use as soon as I could find some to buy. I was starting to see my “pattern”, and it was glaringly obvious. As soon as I started drinking, even one lousy beer, I would turn into a raving blow monkey.

  My month at Sobrenity as a now remedial student went by quickly. It was finally decided that Jen and I would legally separate, and that I would go get the rest of my things from Tampa and live in Ft Lauderdale, where I had a pretty strong recovery community that I was attached to. I had never found a sponsor in Tampa, and had lost interest in meetings there quickly. I had re-connected with my previous sponsor Rich, and he was helping me to get my recovery life back together. One weekend, he took me to the Science of Mind Church, a largely harmless new-agey sort of vague Christianity with a touch of Mary Baker Eddy thrown in. It was one of those types of Churches where your salvation was measured in large part by how much prosperity God had allowed into your life. Naturally, I did not fit in very well at this place, but the services were very positive and uplifting, and they had really good coffee and cookies after the services. Rich introduced me at this little social event to his friend and sponsor Bob G. Bob was another Italian guy, a small 50 something man with cool round metal frame glasses and a little rat tail ponytail on the back of his head. We both had some serious interest in Hinduism and Buddhism, and hit it off immediately.

  In recovery, one is always urged to gather as many phone numbers of other alcoholics and addicts as possible, to ensure that you will have someone to talk to in the event that you are reaching for a drink. I did not do this too often. Firstly, I didn’t hang out with any drunks and addicts when I was using, I did most of my drug using and serious alcoholic activities all by myself. And secondly, they were all as fucked up as I was, or more, and I simply didn’t want to be friends with most of them. But Bob was different, much different than many of the recovering people I had met. He had grown up in the East Village in NYC during the sixties, and had seen all the classic bands and musicians of that time like Dylan and Hendrix play some of their most legendary shows. Bob and I just seemed to have an instant rapport, and he wanted me to come over to his place in Hollywood Florida and check out his vintage Gibson acoustic guitar. Some local music store had offered him $200 for it, and he felt that was a bit low – and he was right. It was a guitar that he had purchased new in Greenwich Village in 1967, and I hated to see him sell it…but was able to get him $1500 for it from a local vintage dealer I knew.

  I had started to play some solo acoustic gigs in Ft Lauderdale and Hollywood, and one night played a beautiful little Irish pub in Oakland Park. One of the owners popped out of the back after my set with a bottle of Powers Whiskey, and handed it to me. “I noticed you hadn’t had a drink all night, so I brought you some of my own” he said with a smile. “You can’t get this stuff here in the USA” I said, and hesitated for a moment. Here I went again, and that one swig turned into another night of pints of Guinness and endless shots of Irish whiskey. After finally packing my stuff and getting paid, I headed straight down Sunrise Blvd. I had never copped drugs in Ft Lauderdale, but after having been in rehab there for over four months, I had picked up some local information as a matter of course. It only took me 15 minutes to find the stuff.

  Once again, I was in a crisis moment, After I had gone through all of my money, and had even pawned my amplifier, guitar, and effects pedals, I was destitute and had no way of making any more cash. I called Terry at MAP from a payphone on Sunrise Avenue in the harsh unforgiving midday sun, and he didn’t want to hear it. “Go to a fucking meeting” is the only help he offered me. MAP was done with me, and had absolutely no more help or funds for me, that bridge was smoldering and beyond repair. I sold some of my CDs, including rare copies of my own albums, to some CD store on the street there to get gas and cigarette money, and headed to the 101 Club in Pompano for a meeting. After the meeting, we had a “meeting after the meeting” with my sponsor Rich and two of the women from that meeting group. They are tried to convince me to stay, but I had decided to run from Broward back to Tampa. I wanted to be closer to my daughter, and wanted to be away from Ft Lauderdale, as I had now “soiled” it by using drugs there. Recovery professionals call this a “geographic”, where one will move from place to place not realizing that no matter where you go, there YOU are. I have been in towns that I have never visited, and been able to find whatever drugs I wanted within an hour or less. Guaranteed.

  Even after all of their entreaties, I had made up my mind. I was heading back to Tampa, and no amount of logical thinking or common sense would convince me otherwise. My brother allowed me the opportunity to crash at his place, and I took him up on it. Once again, I drove across Alligator Alley and made my way to Tampa under the cover of night.

  I spent a few weeks hanging out with my brother, and was doing pretty well. The night before my sister was to get married, however, we had gone out to a strip club to play some pool. Later in the evening, I relaxed and had a beer, which led to doing some shots with the dancers. My brother was already happily loaded, but was concerned that I would be OK. Once I was drunk, a plan began to immediately form in my mind on how I was going to leave there, go back to the apartment and “borrow” $200 from my brother’s safe, and return it somehow without him knowing it. Of course, I made a mess of things, not coming back to the apartment until 7 am, with my brother sitting there looking at the obviously opened and pilfered safe. He knew exactly what was missing, and was not happy. I have had many an ass-whipping in my life, but I am really glad that particular one I could have gotten that night didn’t happen. I might have a small chance against my brother if I was sober and in good shape, but at this point he would have simply beat me into the ground.

  Not that he needed to. I had to spend that entire beautiful day in a post hangover massive depression. The wedding was held on a boat in St Petersburg, and I simply found a place to hide on the upper deck for most of the event, appearing only periodically to get a fresh double shot of Jack Daniels. All of my family knew I was really out of it, and pleasantly tried to avoid me. My sister’s good friend Kim was there, and she and I had been pretty close over the years. She hung out with me up on the upper deck, and fetched me a few more drinks when the bar had been instructed to “cut me off ”. Jen figured out that Kim was up there with me, and had to make a scene about it. Jen was the least of my problems – I had pissed off my brother, the one and only brother I have. We had stuck together through thick and thin, but this had stretched our relationship to the breaking point. He would not speak to me at the wedding, and somehow I managed to drive myself back to the apartment. Once I got there, it was pretty simple. When I walked in, he said “pack your shit”. I said “OK”. And that was that.

  I loaded up the car again for what seemed like the 15th time that month, and headed into the unknown. Where the hell would I go now? I once again had no money, no job, no place to live, and seemingly no future. So, I headed to a bar.

  My friend who had owned the James Joyce had sold that bar, and had opened a much larger pub in Hyde Park. That week was grand opening week, and he was happy to see me and immediately booked me to play that night. I explained that I didn’t have any sound equipment but he didn’t mind, preferring that I simply perform as a roving solo acoustic performer. I immediately began drinking pints of Stella, which had just become available in the USA, and began to immediately relax with that golden rush of alcoholic bliss and ignorance.

  That night was a blur, I drank continuously for free that whole night from beginning to end. I had hung out with this beautiful young girl who worked at USF named April. She had hung around with a lot of the inner crowd at the James Joyce, and was a bubbly young woman with some serious curves. She and I had gotten completely drunk together, and were basically all over each other most of that night at the bar. Until Jen arrived, of course.

  Nearly all of the bar staff in the various clubs know each other. Jen was legendary, and as soon as she entered the bar there was a murmur from the cus
tomers and staff. She immediately ran over to where I was at the bar and poured a pint of beer on me. April backed away as Jen began to verbally assault me, hurling invectives with an almost unearthly anger. I began to taunt her, as I was drunk, we were separated, and no matter what, I did not have to go home with her. This didn’t work too well, as she slapped me hardly across the face and dumped yet another pint of beer on me before walking out. I guess I can’t accuse her of being passive aggressive like me.

  After witnessing this debacle, the crowd went back to what they were doing, and I got another pint of beer as I attempted to wipe the other two off. April came back over and we finished off the night drinking and playing darts until they threw us out of the bar. I had played absolutely no songs, and yet had somehow done the gig.

  April and I somehow managed to make it back to her apartment that she shared with some of the other Joyce regulars. I drove us back to North Tampa safely somehow. We spent the night together, and when I awoke the next day, she bought me a pack of cigarettes and filled my tank completely with gas. It was a gift, because I had absolutely no money left, and nowhere to go. April was a beautiful angel to me that weekend, keeping me safe and ensconced in her large feather bed until I finally had decided to return, once again, to Ft Lauderdale.

  After leaving April’s place, I simply had nowhere to go. I ended up back at the pub in Hyde Park, and drank until well after midnight. I made the drunken decision to drive back to Hollywood, and take Bob up on his offer. He seemed like someone that really cared, and we had an instant connection from the start. He had 20 years of clean and sober time, and he wore it lightly, unlike many of the hard core recovery people I had been around. All of my possessions were already in the car, and I headed across I-4 towards the eastern side of the state. I was driving seriously impaired, but knew I had to leave Tampa. Making a split second decision, I decided to take the small scenic road down Hwy 27 that cuts through the center of the state. It’s a dangerous road to drive at night, especially when one is drunk. Miraculously, I managed to stay awake and spent my last $2 in change at a Taco Bell for the first bit of food I had eaten in several days. I fell asleep at the wheel several times on the final stretch of Hwy 27 that leads to Alligator Alley. Somehow I managed to make it to the major highway that leads to Ft Lauderdale. It’s a miracle that I didn’t wreck the car or get a DUI on the cop-infested speed trap ridden expanse of Hwy 27.