By the end of ’73 everything
suddenly began grinding to a halt. Jerome quit drinking, which somewhat
curtailed our fellowship (and should’ve told us how shallow our relationship was).
Since our crew had disintegrated, Alma and I remained afloat on a sea of
alcohol wondering where we would drift to next. I threw in with the Jehovah’s
Witnesses and they came pretty close to inculcating me, but it seems that the
Holy Ghost kept me from making a full commitment. My personal appearance was
beginning to reflect my inner turmoil, and I distinctly recall the poor soul
who accompanied the Merceds to the home of their new friends, the Rocks, on
Christmas Eve of 1973. I still had long hair and a beard, wearing one of the
Jurczaks’ woolen collegiate sweater, my faded purple flowered shirt, the
Merceds’ gray patterned bellbottoms, and my worn black-and-silver platform
boots. What a mess.
Chico Rock was as
bizarre a figure as I was at the time. I had no inkling that he would
eventually become one of the most cherished friends of my lifetime. He was
slightly over five feet tall and had a strong Filipino accent. As it turned
out, he was a veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea and Vietnam) with the Rangers
and the Green Berets, and earned three Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart cluster.
He had a steel plate in his head, multiple bullet scars and a big chunk of
shrapnel damage to his calf muscle. What really ruined his life, though, was a
gang attack on his way home from law school. They nearly killed him, and it
made him question the value of what he had risked his life for all those years.
Chico was as much a rebel as I was, and in time we ignited a kindred spirit
within us.
I
was in a total state of flux in ’74. I started hanging out with Jerome again on
Friday nights and getting drunk with Alma on weekends, but nothing else seemed
to be happening. I quit Scorpion Karate and was teaching a class I usurped from
some wannabe karate teacher at Strong Place Baptist Church. I came in drunk one
night and found grown-up Hector Garcia and Pete Matos in class. We had a fine
session but, unfortunately, at class end, our customary free fight turned into
a brawl between me and Pete. I nearly broke his rib to get the best of him, and
I still regret it to this day.
Needless
to say, I was drifting in a sea of angst with nowhere to go. The Alice Cooper
Band had broken up, as had the New York Dolls, and American pop culture was in
as bad a state as I was. Movies like Godfather
II and Lenny were reminders of
how crappy things were. I wasn’t sure of who I was or where I was headed. Yet,
God was still watching, and, once again, He allowed my life to be saved by rock
and roll.
Louie Cazucci was
barely thirteen when Chi Chi Guzman brought him around that Fall of ‘74. He was
a tall lanky kid with a pasty face and two of the biggest hands on a kid we’d
ever seen (reminding me some time later of the immortal Russian composer
Rachmaninoff). He was a guitarist in Bay Ridge who had put out the word that he
was looking for a wild man to front his new rock band. Louie came from a
dysfunctional family, his Mom a psych patient who had moved in with a hardcore
NYPD self-defense instructor named Dick Freeman. Dick gave Louie a tough time
and we all saw signs of mental trauma but, back then, people minded their own
business in such matters. Unfortunately, Louie saw me as a father figure and I
handled it very badly with my own psych problems, resulting in him lumping me
in with the rest of the abusive authority figures in his life. Just as with
Jeremy Lara over thirty years later, the Lord gave me a great chance to change
a younger person’s life and I failed. Sorry Lord, sorry Louie, sorry Jeremy…sorry-ass
Turk.
When he
propositioned me to sing for him, I jumped into it like a dying man at a desert
oasis. Louie brought in Stu Shapiro, a mollycoddled Jewish kid on his block who
played bass. Louie had a 30-watt Ampeg and a Frankenstein guitar (made from
parts of dead axes, much like our drum sets of days to come). Stu had a quality
bass and amp, so it was my turn to ante. I ran out and bought a mic and a 10-watt
amp at a downtown variety store, then made a call to Johnny De Losa, who in
turn called his friend Al.
Al Catraz was a
dorky Cuban kid who was a classmate of Johnny De Losa’s. He wore metal-framed
glasses and flashed a beaver-toothed grin, his frizzy brown mane badly in need
of a haircut. Like myself, he bore little resemblance to the underground punk
rock star he would become five years later. His earliest guitar influences were
BB King and Eric Clapton (who would be two of my own thirty years later), and
his claim to fame was having played onstage at Bishop Loughlin during a student
festival. Over time, there was a competition between Al and Louie that never
was resolved. The Spoiler atmosphere was always a problem as well in that it
was both musical and macho. One had to be both talented and tough to build
status, and sometimes, as in that case of Zing, attitude could be better than
aptitude. Al finally achieved his status, but it was as a Ducky Boy five years
later. What he did have at the time was a 100-watt amp and a Les Paul guitar,
which gave him permanent resident status as a Spoiler.
As always, my
delusions of grandeur would know no limits. Dreams of stardom filled my head
and I invited Baron Sanders along with my parents down for an open session,
which greatly impressed them considering there was no inkling that such a thing
as a band would have ever existed beforehand. I wasted no time in heading out
to our old drinking spot, the Verdict, and talked the manager into letting us
play at their Christmas party. That turned out to be the biggest train wreck in
my life at the time.
We got there and
enthusiastically set up, with all our parents (except Al’s, who didn’t drink)
en route for the second set. What I failed to notice at the outset was that the
place was actually a cop bar with plenty of off-duty detectives in attendance.
Naturally, being the naïve oaf I was at the time, I went into my Lou Reed act
straight out of Rock and Roll Animal
(still my fave guitar album of all time) and, of course, “Heroin”, with the
mock shoot-up and all. Only I had accumulated the actual works to make it more
realistic. In this day and age, the cops would have probably taken me down for possession
of drug paraphernalia, but back then, we simply had our plug pulled.
Of course, when
our folks got there, Mary, the manager, had no choice but to let us resume.
Yours truly, being as pigheaded as Day One, decided to start the show from
scratch (which, to my credit, I would never do again). This time, it was
outraged parents who yanked us off, first Stu Shapiro then Johnny De Losa.
Having no bassist was a non-issue; no drummer was something neither Lou, Al or
I anticipated. With Broadway Turk Superstar in hibernation, the neophyte Dizon
character broke into tears, folded his tent and slunk off into the night.
Louie’s mom Ruth
was there, and I recall her being quite the card at the show. As I mentioned,
she had a hard life but refused to surrender, like the rest of us. She was an
attractive woman and, believe it or not, we had a liking for each other. It
never went anywhere since, for one, I wasn’t as confident with the ladies as I
pretended to be until much later in life. Secondly, if Dick Freeman had caught
on, he might’ve made life far more complicated for me than it already was. Still,
we were always on great terms and we had our share of intimate conversations. I
will always have a soft spot in my heart and fond memories of that lovely and
lively woman.
At any rate, I
fired Stu and Johnny, after which Louie went AWOL, leaving Al, Alma and I wondering
what to do next. Alma stepped up to the plate, as she would so many times over
the years, and brought in some connections from her school days as well as her
time at the IHB (Industrial House for the Blind, which catered to the visually-impaired).
All at once, we found ourselves surrounded by a cast of new and unusual
recruits.
(To be continued...)
