Rock Monster

by Kristin Casey

  Praise for Rock Monster

  “Told with an aching straightforward vulnerability, peppered with massive superstars and seedy hangers-on, this addictive spiral catapults you into what life with an unpredictable rock god is really like. Hooked on each other, the booze fueled muse and her man, Joe Walsh, take ‘monstering’ to a harrowing level. The writing is so good it feels like spending a chatty couple of weeks with your wildest best friend, spilling oh so many scintillating secrets.”

  —Pamela Des Barres, bestselling author of I’m With the Band

  “This ain’t no fanboy account, it’s the genuine lived experience of Walsh’s most intimate relationship. And while you’re there check out the pictures! (Walsh may be crazy, but he ain’t that crazy!)”

  —Adam “Slowpoke” Temple, Austin guitarist, The Scabs

  “Kristin Casey’s moving, honest, and powerful story takes us into a world we’ve all dreamed of being inside—the excitement of life with a famous rockstar, the drugs, the sex, and the romance—and pulls back the curtain to reveal what actually happens backstage.”

  —Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl

  “Rock Monster gives an unflinchingly honest, crisply detailed look into Casey’s years as a young stripper dating a famous rock star. It’s everything you ever wondered about that life and more. Her writing is so intimate and revealing that you almost feel guilty, as if you’re reading somebody’s diary. Her spot-on descriptions of the yearnings, the urge to please, her own feelings of inadequacy as well as the insidious slide into drug addiction amidst the glamorous touring life makes this a must read.”

  —Amy Dresner, author of My Fair Junkie

  “I knew I was gonna love this book the moment I got to the line, ‘Can we please fuck normally now?’ And that was within the first dozen or so pages. I mean, seriously, what more do you want from a whirlwind romance between a stripper and a rock star? You want drugs, too? Well you’re in luck, fancypants. It’s like they raided Hunter S. Thompson’s personal stash, and then fucked like demons. If this isn’t what constitutes as great literature, then I give up. If nothing else, read this book and the next time ‘Life’s Been Good’ comes on the radio you [will] smile knowingly to everyone around you and say, ‘You guys have no idea.’”

  —Eric Spitznagel, author of Old Records Never Die

  A Genuine Barnacle Book

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristin Casey

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302,

  Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Dante

  epub isbn: 9781947856530

  Photos from the Personal Archive of Krisitin Casey

  Cover Design by Jennifer Nelson

  Interior Design by Hailie Johnson

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Casey, Kristin, author.

  Title: Rock monster : my life with Joe Walsh / Kristin Casey.

  Description: First Hardcover Edition | A Barnacle Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572791

  Subjects: LCSH Casey, Kristin. | Walsh, Joe—Relations with women. | Drug addicts—United States—Biography. | Rock musicians—United States—Biography. | Eagles (Musical group). | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Music

  Classification: LCC ML421 .W35 2018 | DDC 782.42166/092/2—dc23

  To Bruce Hughes, my muse

  Lalo, my love

  Chuck and Mutt

  Contents

  Prologue

  Night Moves

  Cruel Summer

  Mirror in the Bathroom

  How to Make a Monster

  Down Under

  With a Little Help From my Friends

  Woman on a Train; Up on a Plane

  To be Treated

  How High the Moon

  Fools Rush In

  A Woman Knows

  Are You Satisfied

  Wouldn’t it be Nice

  Mama Told Me Not to Come

  The Zoo

  Funeral for a Friend

  Gold Dust Woman

  Crawling from the Wreckage

  It’s too Funky in Here

  Can’t Find My Way Home

  Change It

  Hotel California

  If I Needed You

  Without You

  Dream On

  Epilogue Walk Away

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The first time I heard his voice was in 1981 while spinning the radio dial in search of a good song—a suitable anthem to launch another day as an earnest, angsty high school freshman. Being too young for concerts and too broke to buy records, my intro to rock and roll took place during carpool. For twenty-five minutes, twice a day, seventies rock, pop, and new wave hits washed over me in the back seat, crammed between schoolmates watching the world fly by. One morning I got shotgun—finally, DJ privileges—and surfed FM stations before Dad’s Oldsmobile cleared the driveway.

  A guitar lick grabbed my attention. Like a kitten to a laser light, I was captivated by its uniquely funky groove. The vocals, however, sounded vaguely familiar. I keyed into the singer’s haunting, plaintive voice and in a flash of recognition I thought, I know him. It made no sense at all and yet I was certain.

  A story unfolded in my head and chest. Once upon a time—a very, very long time ago—I knew this man and he knew me. We’d been together and in love, and then something happened to tear us apart…permanently.

  I was in the passenger’s seat of an olive-green, four-door Cutlass sedan, heading south on the freeway in light traffic. I was wearing a Catholic school uniform: plaid skirt and white blouse, with a training bra, knee socks, and Top Siders. My bangs were feathered, a skill I’d mastered just in time for the trend to go out of style. I was skinny and freckled, a bookworm and a virgin. I had no idea what true love felt like, yet I was suddenly awash in the pain of its loss.

  It seemed a mite unfair. Also, I must be nuts.

  I cracked my window open, letting a whoosh of air drown out the rest of the song. With rapid-fire mental gymnastics, I latched onto a temporary insanity diagnosis. Yes, that’s it. Probably stress-induced like my eczema, and hadn’t that disappeared on its own? Then so would this nonsensical turmoil. Music was powerful and had strange effects on people. Also, I was in puberty, and according to Mom, even more irrational than usual. This one time, I decided to believe her.

  I twisted the knob and changed the station. Reincarnation wasn’t real, love didn’t survive death, and I preferred new wave music, anyway.

  •••

  The first time I had a drink was in 1982 on a babysitting job for a medical intern and his nervous wife. It was their first night out since the baby, a six-month-old who slept for two hours while I scrolled through basic cable, wondering how to unscramble the adult channel.

  When the couple returned, it was clear they’d been fighting. The wife marched into the baby’s room and shut the door behind her. Her husband sighed and disappeared from view. I sat on the arm of the couch, unsure what to do, until the handsome doctor summoned me to the kitchen. I entered to find him po
uring the two smallest drinks I’d ever seen.

  “Ever had one of these?” he asked, breezy as could be.

  “Uh-uh,” I replied, trying to sound cool, as if my jet-setting teenage schedule were simply too packed to have sampled every exotic liquor in the world yet. “What’s the lemon for?”

  He grinned. “I’ll show you.” And he did…the whole salty, juicy ritual.

  When it was my turn, I did as I was shown: lick, gulp, suck. A sharp intake of breath, then warmth spread through my belly. Suddenly the skies parted.

  Revelatory.

  I’d never felt anything like it, not known such pleasure existed. I get it now. This is how other people feel. How they smile, laugh, and make friends easily. This is what it’s like to be normal.

  Why hadn’t anyone told me?

  The dashing doctor poured two more shots. “So,” he said, serious now. “Were you able to unscramble the adult channel?”

  I laughed—the easiest, most alluring laugh of my life. He joined in, and my heart swelled with a fleeting sense of intimacy. I felt pretty for the first time ever. Sexy, desirable, and free of the nagging self-consciousness that had all but defined me till then. Barriers melted and walls disappeared, as the cramped galley kitchen became a red carpet passage to an award ceremony in my honor. I had never felt so deserving. I wanted the night to last forever.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Time to get you home.”

  Driving through pouring rain, the doctor fixed his eyes on the road. I pretended we were on a date, his silence a sign that he was plotting how to kiss me good night. We couldn’t, of course, since he worked with my mother. It could get awkward for him. (That I’d intuited and accepted this fact served to cement my newfound sophistication.) When he dropped me off and left in a rush, I forgave him the missed opportunity. Someday, other men would want to kiss me. If I could hold onto this feeling for the rest of my life, they’d be lining up for me.

  I shouted good night to my dad from the hallway, lest he notice my stunning transformation, and floated up the stairwell to bed. (Literally, my feet did not touch the carpet.) How do I get more of this stuff? I wondered. I had found my solution to life.

  •••

  At age fourteen I had two epiphanies: love hurts and alcohol heals. What’s more, they seemed to complement each other. Alcohol elevated me to a place where I could be loved, and when I stumbled it would cushion my fall. I spent the next fifteen years testing that theory.

  Night Moves

  I was not exactly thrilled about being fixed up, initially. Especially not about being tricked into it. Not until I found myself being led down the Radisson’s sixth-floor hallway did I feel a twinge of excitement. Intrigue is a better word. Or openness—that’s it. I was open to meeting a new guy and the possibility of liking him. Open to the idea of hitting it off, without getting my heart shredded in the process. In truth, I expected to exchange a few pleasantries before faking a yawn, saying good night, and driving home. I’d give this guy twenty minutes, tops.

  Earlier that evening, Vicki had asked for a ride after work to meet up with the bass player she’d been dating. He was in town to play a gig that weekend. Only later, flying down the freeway at 2:30 a.m., did she casually suggest I come upstairs to hang out…and meet his best friend. The bassist’s bandmate had recently become single, and Vicki thought I’d like him. Based on what, she didn’t say.

  Only twenty, my history with men was already long and convoluted. Working in a strip club for two and half years had padded that experience. But while I thrived on the fleeting intimacies inherent to the job, in the real world I wasn’t lucky with men. Well, I was, just not the way I wanted—with a lasting, loving commitment. As a result, my approach to dating spoke more of trepidation than excitement. Maybe that’s why Vicki sprang it on me like she did. Or maybe I was her only single friend available on short notice.

  I trusted her, though, my closest work friend and favorite fellow stripper. A long, lean, Romanian beauty with a throaty laugh and glowing skin, the girl oozed sex appeal in everything she did. She had a tight, round ass, legs that wouldn’t quit, and more worldliness than she probably should’ve at twenty-six. I had coarse red hair, freckled skin, a boyish frame, and my mother’s chiseled calves—fabulous gams, customers called them. Despite the glaring differences, our DJ had taken to calling both Vicki and me thoroughbreds. I let the lack of originality slide, seeing as he’d been her lover first (with some degree of overlap I pretended hadn’t occurred). Besides, I liked the moniker. A couple of hot-bloods, my racehorse to her show jumper—we were restless, passionate, and spirited. Vicki owned these traits unapologetically, inspiring me to do the same. I saw her as an older version of myself, which was at once comforting and unsettling because if I were still single at her age, I wasn’t sure I’d want to go on living.

  We hadn’t hung out in months. I was back in college for the first time in two years. Vicki had been traveling with her new guy, out on tour or in Los Angeles where he lived. Austin was crawling with musicians—you couldn’t swing a dead bat in that town without hitting eight or ten—so I’d yet to work up interest in this guy’s credentials or the name of his band. Sugar’s was loud and I drank a lot. With a steady stream of regulars, I tended to tune out dressing room chatter in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Which might explain why, earlier that night, I’d promised Vicki a ride to the hotel, then forgotten about it minutes later.

  Compounding my distraction was the unexpected appearance of a guy I’d been dating. A rugged, handsome, super sweet soldier from nearby Fort Hood, whose open adoration triggered a guilty claustrophobia in me. Three weeks earlier, he’d come to the club for a beer and fallen for me, hard—the stripper me, that is, the sexy, sassy, seductive stuff. Not the dark moodiness that drifted underneath. I was a sucker for his shaved head and killer smile, but the boy was too unscathed, and his optimism gave me a headache. I had decided to end it that night, over scrambled eggs at Denny’s, but before we could drive off Vicki caught up and yanked his two-hundred-pound frame right out of my passenger’s seat. The guy was so sweet that he’d let her, helping her into the car and flashing me that smile. Call me tomorrow, he’d made me promise. I never saw him again.

  •••

  Our dates at the Radisson were rock musicians, Vicki said. At “fortyish” they’d been around awhile, but I liked older men—preferred them, actually—and though their names didn’t ring a bell, that didn’t mean anything. I’d been in the punk scene through my teens, exposed to rock only recently, through Sugar’s DJs and Vicki’s extensive record collection. I didn’t buy many albums or attend rock concerts. I avoided mainstream crowds. I avoided anything mainstream. I liked my men on the edgier side, as well, and I was worried a forty-year-old rocker might be a little milquetoast for me, or worse—a shirtless, longhaired Joe Perry–type, which was more Vicki’s thing. The main reason I followed her into the hotel was to expand my horizons. To escape the rut of DJs, bouncers, managers, and fellow strippers I’d been dating.

  Vicki gave their door a hard, solitary knock. I whispered in a rush, “What are their names, again?”

  “My guy is Rick the Bass Player,” she said, stringing the words together like a title (which it was, I later discovered—spelled out like that on album credits and promotional materials). “The singer and guitar player’s name is Joe Walsh.”

  Jowwaalshh, I repeated in my head. I liked its soft yet powerful sound, like a wave crashing.

  Rick answered the door (no cheesy arena rocker, thankfully), a tidily dressed, Native American–looking guy, with long hair and a stolid face. He wore suede boots, tapered jeans, and an untucked dress shirt. He and Vicki hugged, and then she introduced us.

  “Hey,” Rick mumbled in greeting, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear.

  I liked his dark eyes and gentle demeanor. “Nice to meet you,” I said, though he’d already looked away.
I wondered if he was shy or stoned. The guy was as low-key as Eeyore, and I thought that if his friend were equally subdued, I’d be home and in bed within the hour. Then I met Joe and wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  It was a slightly off-kilter sensation, like going to the animal shelter for a fully-grown dog and being given an overgrown puppy instead. He was definitely cute—nice-looking in an offbeat way—with a bouncy kind of energy not entirely contained. He had a way of speaking that was boozy and hyper, like Jerry Lewis mixed with Dean Martin and channeled by Jeff Spicoli. After we’d exchanged hellos, Joe cocked his head and smiled at me for no apparent reason, swaying gently side to side, like a boat on the ocean. He wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary and yet he was. He totally was. Despite all my experience sizing up customers at the club, I was at a loss.

  Vicki and Rick took the couch. I sat in an armchair near the door and hung my purse off the back. Joe moved to the center of the room and proceeded to entertain us with a string of jokes, funnier for his exaggerated delivery than hit-or-miss punch lines. Meanwhile, I was transfixed by a mass of man-boy contradictions: sinewy biceps, boyish mop, and tender green eyes that were simultaneously curious and world-weary. He had large, strong hands with smooth, nimble fingers and a big nose, nicely offset by a wide grin and animated lips.

  But that shirt. Salmon-colored jeans were weird enough, but the cartoonish bicycle design was just plain dorky. Converse high-tops redeemed him, and I decided to withhold further judgment until he finished drawing on the TV. The work in progress turned out to be devil horns, eyeglasses, and a pointy beard arranged around the CNN anchor’s face. As the camera cut away and back again, the mask and newscaster realigned, eliciting cheers from Vicki and the men every single time. It was a thing they did, I realized, an inner-circle private joke, so far removed from typical bad-boy behavior I couldn’t help laughing. When Joe stole a glance at me, I joined in, hollering like a drunken sports fan at the clueless anchor’s expense.