It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [17]
I knew my mom would be disappointed to learn about all of this, and I didn’t want to let her down. In fact, if anything, I wanted to take up the slack in the house and make things easier for her. But I was trying to figure out manhood—and I had a lot of anger.
Still, when the newspaper began to run stories about things we were involved in, I began to see a dire fate for myself—jail or worse. It was time to get out. Besides, my music career was beginning to get more serious.
There was an older kid in my neighborhood who was way ahead of the rest of us when it came to punk rock. His name was Chris Crass and he already had a Mohawk and skinny jeans. In 1978, no one in Seattle had seen fashion or attitude like that yet. One day Chris came up to me at school and told me that he had heard I could play bass. I nodded in the affirmative, totally tongue-tied and nervous.
“I’m starting a band called the Thankless Dogs, and I need a bass player and a drummer,” he said.
The person I spent by far the most time playing music with was Andy. He played drums.
“I know a drummer!” I blurted.
Chris wrote down an address and told me to show up for a trial rehearsal the next day.
I quickly called Andy. We were both really excited and nervous. A band! A real band! The rehearsal spot was in the industrial outskirts south of downtown, near the current site of Safeco Field.
I’ll plead ignorance on the details of how Andy and I got our gear down there for that first rehearsal. We were only fourteen and a momentous opportunity like this didn’t present itself every day; a car may have been borrowed.
When we got there, an older dude with a leather jacket and droopy eyelids answered the door. Up to then I had never met anyone who was actually high on heroin, but I was certain that I just had then and there. His name was Stan and he seemed pretty affable—and also a little amused to see two stubble-free teens coming to audition to be the rhythm section.
What Chris hadn’t told me—or I was too nervous to hear the day before—was that the other guitar player and main singer was Seattle punk legend Mike Refuzor. I had seen Refuzor flyers up around town and instantly recognized him when he said hello as we walked into the room. To me, this was like meeting someone from Led Zeppelin. The loft space where we rehearsed was also where Mike and a few other people lived. I got a crash-course on how to act cool in a situation that was completely beyond the scope of my experience.
Andy and I got the gig, and as the weeks progressed the thing that struck me most about Mike Refuzor was his ability to write great songs with real choruses. He made songwriting seem effortless.
All of the guys in the band were in their early twenties, and from where I stood they were not only much older and wiser but also seemed to have lived hard and interesting lives. Mike turned out to be a great mentor; he took an interest in what I thought and would brag to his friends about me and Andy. The key thing for me was that nobody in that circle was critical of me. It became a comfortable place to hang out and make mistakes in front of other people.
Back at my mom’s house at night, I was busy writing my first song. I was nervous and had nothing at all to gauge my little opus against. No, I would have to play it in front of my newfound friends to see if this song was any good or not. The nurturing atmosphere of that first band