was my fuckin’ band in the first fuckin’ place.
Not Preacher’s.
I see the look on your face.
And yeah, it became his band and not just because the name was changed. I know that. I knew it all along. I knew it when he took over my band. I wanted him to take it over. He was…he was…
He was Preacher McCade, man. Even before he was Preacher McCade, you know what I’m sayin’ to you?
A man like that, his looks, his talent, the way he was, especially the way he was, in that way, if a man like that wants your band, you give it to him.
But Preach and me, we got tight.
I mean, he changed my life even before it all went down, you know?
So it wasn’t that he was a badass. It wasn’t that he was a mean-as-a-snake motherfucker.
It was his talent, man.
I knew.
I knew with that man in my band, my band was going to be something.
And we were.
You hear that song “Click Click Boom” by Saliva?
That was way after us. But the minute I heard those lyrics, hey.
That was me. As a kid.
Everyone else was listening to Culture Club and Duran Duran and Kaja-fuckin’-googoo.
I was listening to Metallica. AC/DC. Iron Maiden. Whitesnake. And what I thought of as the “oldies.” Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. Rush.
And, man, from the beginning, Prince. I mean, overall, he was not my jam, but that dude could play a fuckin’ guitar. He could frame a song.
Fuck.
Sitting in my bedroom, plucking on my bass, listening to that music, dreams of being a juke box hero in my head.
So, I started a band.
And I had bad acne. Bet you know that. Everyone fuckin’ talks about that thanks to Nick. So, I couldn’t get a girlfriend or get laid if I made a deal with the devil to do it.
Nope, [shakes head] wrong about that.
Guess I made a deal with the devil in the end.
A devil named Preacher.
[Laughs]
Yeah.
Anyway, seein’ as I couldn’t do what every other sixteen-year-old boy wants to do, find some girl and fuck her, or at least hold her hand, I started a band.
But it was about the music for me too.
Yeah.
Totally.
All I wanted to do was rehearse and find gigs.
Nicky and Ricky, they’d rehearse all right. They weren’t as into it as Tim and me. But they were down to get good enough to find some gigs. Get paid in six packs. Get laid after.
We scored some basement parties. A few gigs out in some cornfields with generators and kegs and no one listening to a note we were playing because they were all smokin’ pot or feelin’ each other up.
Then we scored that girl Heidi’s party.
You know, for the life of me, I can’t remember her last name. I know she was the middle of five hot sisters. Everyone in school knew about Heidi and her hot sisters.
And it’s weird, man. That I still don’t know. [laughs] I should grab a yearbook, except I don’t have any yearbooks. Burned all of mine.
Figure you know why.
You’d think Heidi whoever-she-was would come forward and say it was her. It was her party where it came together.
Though she and her sisters probably got that house cleaned up and her parents never knew.
Her dad was a cop, a cop with five hot daughters. [chuckles] Got my girls now and they’re beautiful so I know what kind of hell that guy lived.
But everyone knew about Heidi and her hot sisters and everyone wanted in Heidi or her hot sisters’ pants and everyone was scared as shit to try anything with Heidi or any of her sisters because her dad would fuck you up.
So, maybe even now, years later, that guy was such a hardass, they do not want their dad to know Heidi threw a rager while they were out of town.
What I do know is that I’d turned seventeen and the band was closing in on being nearly a year old and I thought that meant something.
Bands don’t last long. You seen The Commitments? [laughs] That’s every band’s story right there, man. One way or another.
One lives.
And a hundred die and the deaths are always ugly.
I also know that the band’s shit was coming together, we’d been at it so long, we’d gone from being bad to being alright.
And I remember that, right before that gig, Ricky had painted this kickass logo on his bass drum that dulled the sound of that motherfucker, but we didn’t care.
We were the Zeniths and that logo with the