It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [18]
The punk scene in Seattle was all about creating something out of nothing. There was only one bar that booked punk bands, the Gorilla Room. Aside from that, bands had no choice but to do it themselves. Bands rented VFW halls and Oddfellows lodges or played in the basements of communal houses. The houses weren’t squats, they were just places a bunch of punks would rent together. They all had names: Boot Boy House, Fag House, Cleveland. You could go hang out at the houses anytime you wanted.
People didn’t take themselves too seriously in the scene, either. There was a weird sense of humor. And being musically different was rewarded. It didn’t matter whether a band’s playing was any good; if they were striving to do something original, people would go check them out. It made for interesting and sometimes cool music. A band couldn’t just look good and expect people to go to their show.
In the summer of 1979, I played my first real concert, with the Vains. Because we were all underage, together with two other bands we rented a community center attached to a public park. The week before the show Andy and I stole about twenty plastic milk crates from the back of a grocery store and somehow nailed plywood onto them. Now we had a stage for the gig. That alone was pretty damn exciting for a fifteen-year-old kid. Our own stage. Man, now we could play anywhere!
I’ll never forget the buildup to the gig. I borrowed a pair of pointy black Beatle boots for that very first gig, and wore yellow corduroy pants that someone tapered in for me and a black-and-white, button-front bowling shirt that I’d found at the Salvation Army—this was well before there were “vintage” clothing stores.
There were only 80 or 100 people at the show, but the feeling that I was entering a place that I was destined for was overwhelming. When we finally went on stage—standing on our plywood-covered milk crates—I was very aware of everyone staring at me and Chris Crass and Andy … then everything stopped … and then sped up … and stopped again. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on, and that too, just stopped. Everything became a blur … a whirl of emotion and confusion and triumph. I don’t remember why, but I kicked a guy in the head in the front row. The blur of it all started to feel like warm water washing over me. The noise was all-enveloping and comfortable. I could forget about the fact that I had cystic acne on my face and that I was a confused and unfocused teen. I could forget about my awkward childhood and fractured relationship with my dad and all the rest.
Afterward, I didn’t remember playing a gig so much as experiencing a feeling. A moment of perfection. Suddenly all I wanted to do was play music. Day and night. But not everyone wanted to rehearse, or at least not as much as I did, so I tried to stay in multiple bands so I always had people to play with. I started practicing multiple instruments, too, so I could fill any position a band had open.
Guitar, drums, bass, whatever, I’ll join!
I remember meeting Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks one afternoon in 1979 when I was fifteen. She was about five years older than I was, but she knew a friend of mine and gave the two of us a lift home from school one day.
When she dropped us off we all played some music together. I played bass. She mentioned that her band needed a drummer—their drummer, Kurt Bloch, was a much better guitar player than drummer.
“I play drums, too,” I said.
So Kurt switched to his guitar and I joined on drums. From that point on, I was in and out of bands nonstop.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For those first few years in Los Angeles I lived beneath the poverty level. I always maintained a working phone line; I had a car, but no car insurance; of course I didn’t have health insurance.
When you are making minimum wage, a lot of things can be hard to fit