I called up Ace Frehley around the time of the first Kiss record, boom! New friend. Ace even sent me Kiss posters which I worshipped and hung proudly on my wall (which by now barely had an inch of naked space). I called up Earl Slick and yup, you guessed it, another new friend. Again, oddly enough in my odd world, I flew Slick in to play guitar on a record I was producing for Doro Pesch about 30 years later, and all he kept saying is “I can’t believe you are the same fucking kid who used to bother me all the time and show up at my house.” Man I was good with the phone, and I guess people liked me or were scared or just downright amused, but it worked.

I met everyone, and I mean everyone. Steven Tyler, Angie Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Queen, and anyone I set my sights on knowing, Like I said, I was networking before that word ever came to be part of our everyday speech. Early on I saw that the real way in was through managers, lawyers, and executives, and that became my path. I told you I inherited many things from my Dad; his gift for making new friends effortlessly and with confidence was surely one and surely the most powerful tool I had in my limited arsenal.

So we go to make the demo, and I have Michael Kamen set up the studio time (cool huh?). We meet the singer for the very first time and he can actually sing! Whew! We record one song because: 1.) I didn’t know any better, and 2.) I had only written one song to date. Then I begin my major assault on management and record companies in the same fashion as I had before, Mr. Living Facebook.

Through my harassment of Steven Tyler, I got to know Kevin McShane at his management company Leber/Krebs (I also got to meet and ultimately live with the most beautiful woman I have ever known via an Aerosmith party and that began my descent into superficial bullshit). I sent bundles of manila envelopes out in my all-out assault on the music business (in the process meeting mentor number two, Jimmy Ienner). To my surprise and complete thrill, labels called us back! We had “meetings”, Jesus what a big word that is, meetings.

Off to New York we went. Went like complete rubes but we went. So me and the band show up at Arista Records carting not just guitars but amplifiers as well! Like a scene out of the Beverly Hillbillies, people in reception looked at us like we were naked. We roll into Stu Fine’s office, and he too looks aghast and confused. You see on the phone, he asked if we had other songs and come on in to play them for him, so we took that literally, and of course we had nothing else recorded, so we figured why not? As I was playing him some ideas and strumming along, my Mom called me at his office. She said Mercury Records called and please call them immediately. Wow!

So of course not showing one ounce of class or brains, I relay the news to Stu Fine and immediately call Mercury in front of him. Excellent move, but who knew better? Vernon Gibbs at Mercury asked me to leave Arista immediately (of course I told him where I was) and come over to see him. Figuring our audition with Stu was done, we packed up the gear and went over to Mercury, telling Stu I would call him later. I could see by the looks on the faces of Arista personnel they were glad we were leaving.

We get to Mercury and Vernon Gibbs comes out to reception and immediately tells us we remind him of the Stones! In retrospect, maybe he meant he was stoned because we sounded nothing like the Stones. Anyway, here we are in his snazzy office, and the halls are lined with gold and platinum, and we are out of our minds!

Vernon then takes us downstairs to their studio (more mind blowing going on) and then tells us he wants us to record more songs and, get this, they will pay for it! The ship has come in, avoided the iceberg and we are sailing away dressed in tuxedos! We go home insane with happiness, and I begin a songwriting bender that lasts through the next century (Ok, a few months). We begin a lifestyle that consisted of writing, practicing and going up to New York to record whenever we wanted to. Life was grand. Now many months later and over twenty songs recorded, Vernon thought it was time to bring the demos to the main office in Chicago (they were based there then) to present them to the president and get us going on our path to fame and fortune.

The next day Vernon calls and says, “I was so excited; I forgot to bring the tapes.” Fuck me. Not to worry, he was having them sent by messenger the next day. Now we go into both excitement and prayer mode for the next twenty-four hours. I don’t hear from Vernon, so I call the president of the label and ask him if he heard the tape (remember the phone was my friend and my sword; I’d call anyone). First clue was having to explain to him who we were and then after a pause he says, “Oh yes! We passed.” Passed? Wait a minute. I say to him, “You didn’t pass, we recorded all these songs.” He explains again, the answer is no.

Idiot, we sound like the Stones, we’re the future of music, we told all of our friends we were getting a deal, we told the local newspaper and did an article, we bragged, we dreamed, we even priced new cars (something that comes up again later on), how in God’s name could they pass on us? Well they did, and we were so shocked that we just broke up the band, we didn’t even bother going back to Arista or trying anyone else. We were now losers, so we just broke up. Interesting reaction to rejection, huh? Break up the band.

Now things were even worse because I was close enough to the brass ring to touch it and then fell off the merry-go-round and landed on my sorry ass. So I went back to the room and started writing more songs, not for once thinking the band was no more. It seemed logical to keep writing and figure out the rest of it later.

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