No Regrets

by Ostrosky, John, Frehley, Ace, Layden, Joe

  “Hey, man, I’m a high school graduate!” I said to Gene.

  “Good for you.” He didn’t seem terribly excited.

  “Are you free? We have to celebrate.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  First thing we did was buy two bottles of Mad Dog—MD 20/20, one of the all-time great (meaning horrible but effective) bum wines. The “MD” actually stood for Mogen David, the distiller of this fine brew; “20/20” represented its potency (20 percent alcohol) and the number of ounces in the bottle. Mad Dog was, and still is, cheap, strong wine (although the alcohol content of present-day MD is a saner 13 percent). Horrific stuff, but a sure and quick buzz. Very popular at the time. We also picked up a six-pack of Colt 45, just to make sure the job was well done, and then fished a couple of empty boxes out of the trash near a post office on Fordham Road. The boxes were clean and adorned with stamps, and our plan was to put the beer and Mad Dog inside, and then smuggle the package into a local movie theater. If anyone asked, we’d say we were going to the post office after the movie.

  “I don’t think we’re gonna get away with this,” Gene said.

  “Ah, bullshit,” I said, examining the package. “Looks official enough. I don’t think anyone will say a word.”

  They didn’t. Gene and I bought our tickets and strolled casually through the lobby, even stopping to pick up some popcorn along the way. Then we went into the theater and took a couple of seats near the front. We cracked open the Mad Dog, popped a couple of cans of Colt 45, and started celebrating my newly minted academic credentials. Before long we were getting pretty loose—putting our feet up on the seats in front of us, tossing popcorn at the screen, carrying on a running dialogue with the movie, rolling empty beer cans down the aisle. This naturally had the effect of drawing attention our way, and pretty soon one of the ushers was standing over us, flashlight in hand.

  “Gentlemen, you’ll have to keep it down or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  I laughed, tossed a handful of popcorn in his face.

  “Fuck off, man.”

  The usher scurried away. Poor kid was just trying to do his job, and here we were, a couple of loud-mouthed drunks making his life miserable. On the long list of atonements I’ve made (or should have made) over the years, this one is probably near the bottom. I mean, there was no long-term damage. But still… the kid deserved better.

  He came back a few moments later, again told us to lower our voices or face expulsion. This time I didn’t say a word. Instead I jumped out of my seat, curled my hand into a fist, and clocked the kid right on the jaw.

  “What the hell?” he said, rolling toward the screen. His flashlight cracked against a seat and went dark, but in the flickering shadow of the film I could see his hat turned sideways on his head. And I could see something else.

  The kid was crying.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the lobby, shouting “Somebody call the cops!” as he bolted through the doors at the rear of the theater.

  I looked around the theater. Everyone was staring at us. Then I turned to Gene.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we should get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I don’t feel like getting arrested tonight.”

  We bolted for the nearest exit door at the front of the theater, adjacent to the screen, and sprinted down an alleyway before heading back to my place, which was only about five blocks away. Budding alcoholic that I was, I was careful to grab the Mad Dog and Colt 45 before we made our exit, which allowed us to spend the remainder of the evening getting loaded in my room. It wasn’t until about an hour later that I realized I was missing something.

  “Can you believe this?” I said to Gene.

  “What?”

  “I left my fucking diploma at the theater.”

  Gene started to laugh—a stupid, amused, drunken cackle.

  “Oh, well. Guess you’re still a dropout, man.”

  Now I was pissed—in more ways than one. Drunk, yeah, but also really angry about having lost my diploma, and about the whole embarrassing situation. I was supposed to be meeting Jeanette the following night, and I’d planned to show her my diploma. Silly as it might sound, I was kind of proud that I’d actually gone back to school and finished the job. And I knew she’d be proud of me for having done it. The diploma was merely a piece of paper, yes, but it represented something. And now I’d lost it.

  Or maybe not.

  “Come on,” I said to Gene. “We’re going back.”

  He looked at me like I was nuts.

  “Back where?”

  “To the theater. I have to find my diploma.”

  “Oh, you gotta be trippin’, man.”

  By the time we got back, the building was dark and the front doors locked. This was one of those elegant old theaters, with heavy, oak-frame doors and brass handles. I pulled at the door for a moment to see if I could pop the lock. No chance. Gene was about to give up, figuring reasonably that we’d used up our allotment of stupid behavior for the day. Just as he began to walk away, however, I spotted a garbage can on the sidewalk. And not one of those cheap plastic kinds, either. A good old-fashioned metal canister, about three and a half feet high, two feet in diameter.

  Perfect…

  I could hear Gene laughing as I heaved the pail through the front door, sending shards of glass in all directions. For some reason there was a delay before the theater’s security alarm kicked in, just enough time for me to sprint into the place and begin rummaging for my diploma. I combed through the seats located in the general vicinity of where we had been sitting (or where I thought we had been sitting—Mad Dog wreaks havoc on the memory), but I could find nothing at all.

  And then the alarms began to sound.

  “Come on!” Gene shouted from the lobby. “Let’s hit the road!”

  “Fuck! I can’t find it!”

  I ran back out the front door, slipping on a pile of broken glass and slicing my hand open in the process. Then I scrambled to my feet and sprinted away. As Gene and I rounded a corner, I could see a pair of cop cars pulling up in front of the theater, sirens wailing, lights flashing.

  Too tired and drunk to talk, I smiled at Gene, even as we kept running. We ended up back at my place completely exhausted, and I had to wake up my mom to help clean out and bandage my hand (since I was too loaded to do it myself).

  The following day, I went down to Roosevelt and picked up a replacement diploma. They wanted to know what had happened to the original.

  “It was destroyed in a freak accident at the theater,” I said.

  Which was the truth… sort of.

  ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

  July 17, 1970

  In the wake of Woodstock, the entire music business was gripped with what could best be described as Festival Fever. Multi-act shows, sometimes lasting a few hours, stretching out over days, were all the rage. This being the height of the Vietnam War, themes of brotherhood and peace typically were attached to the proceedings, to give the whole thing an air of nobility. Really, though, it was the music that mattered.

  That and the drugs.

  And the sex.

  The summer of 1969 had been a blast. I got into the hippie scene in a major way: drank a lot of wine, smoked a lot of pot, had sex with a half-dozen different girls. Everything was loose and easy and relatively safe. By the following summer, though, things seemed to have changed a bit. I noticed some of my friends had modified their habits when it came to dealing with mind-altering substances. Instead of just lighting up a joint, they’d drop some acid. A few had even started shooting dope. Heroin, frankly, scared the shit out of me. Always did. Even at the height of my drug use I stayed away from heroin, partly because I didn’t like needles, but also because I honestly thought it might kill me. As for LSD, well, that was spooky shit as well. Probably had something to do with my bad glue trip and the scary psychosis that went along with it. I knew enough about acid to know that it could really fuck with your
mind, and not just in the short term. I noticed that with some of my friends, if they had a couple of bad trips, the effects could linger for months, either in the form of flashbacks or depression. Then they’d start taking downers to ease the stress and anxiety that came with residual psychosis, or whatever you want to call it. All that mattered to me was this: if you dropped too much acid (and who the hell was to say how much was too much?) you had a reasonable chance of ending up in the nuthouse.

  I didn’t need that risk—my psychological state was fragile enough, as the U.S. Army had determined when I was classified 1-Y following a psychiatric evaluation at Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn. That got me out of the draft, which was all well and good, but it certainly left some lingering doubts about my mental health.

  So I never took LSD. Not intentionally, anyway. I may have been dosed a couple of times, however. I remember once in high school, for example, this kid named Alex who used to walk the hallways with a goofy smile on his face. A little heavy, with a bulbous nose and a face forever flushed red, he reminded me of Santa Claus. Handed out treats like St. Nick, as well.

  “Try this, man,” he said one day, offering me a joint.

  “What is it?”

  “Panama Red. Awesome shit.”

  I smoked it that afternoon with my friend Keith, and we tripped in a major way. I’m talking Day-Glo colors and kaleidoscopic visions. I don’t know for sure if it was laced with acid, but if not, it was the strongest, strangest pot I’ve ever smoked. I didn’t like the effect, and had no desire to seek it out intentionally. I didn’t want to lose control. Two guys in one of my bands, Neil and John, tripped regularly. Me? I preferred alcohol. That I could handle (or so I rationalized). I knew that I was going to have a career in music someday, and I wanted a better life for myself. I saw guys tripping on acid, incapacitated months down the road, and it didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t think it was worth taking something with the chance I could end up with permanent brain damage or incapacitating mental illness (the irony, of course, is that eventually I wound up with both, despite abstaining from heroin and acid). It wasn’t worth rolling the dice when I wanted to accomplish bigger things.

  For better or worse, naïvely or not, that was my line in the sand.

  Instinctively, I realized I had to remain clearheaded enough to take advantage of whatever opportunities came my way. There is a reason I chose the persona of the Spaceman when I joined KISS: I believe wholeheartedly in cosmic intervention; everything happens for a reason.

  I was nineteen years old when I went to the New York Pop Festival, on Randall’s Island in the East River, in the summer of 1970. This was yet another mini-Woodstock, with an amazingly eclectic lineup of musicians that included Mountain, Steppenwolf, Jethro Tull, Grand Funk Railroad, Richie Havens, Sly and the Family Stone, Dr. John, Van Morrison, and Eric Clapton.

  Oh, and one other person.

  Jimi Hendrix.

  The whole thing was kind of surreal. You have to remember, for a kid like me, who used to walk around Roosevelt High with a copy of Are You Experienced? under his arm, seeing Hendrix was like a Catholic getting to meet the pope. Hendrix was nothing short of godlike. By the summer of 1970, unfortunately, Hendrix was nearing not only the end of his career, but the end of his life; within two months he’d be dead of a drug overdose. Still, on that day at Randall’s Island (the last concert he’d ever perform in New York), he seemed at the peak of his powers—a living, breathing guitar hero.

  I went to the show with some friends I used to hang out with at Poe Park, a little spot in the Bronx where Edgar Allan Poe lived out his final years, and where the Bohemian crowd around Fordham University used to gather. (I once organized a concert for one of my bands there.) But we separated shortly after we arrived. They were content to get high and listen to the music with the masses. I wanted to get closer. This had become a habit for me. Just as I’d managed to sidle up to Murray the K a few years earlier at the RKO Theatre, I suddenly found myself inching toward the stage at Randall’s Island.

  Maybe it was because I looked like a rock star, even if I wasn’t one at the time. I was tall and skinny, with hair that went halfway down my back. I wore lemon yellow hot pants, a black T-shirt adorned with a snakeskin star, and checkered Vans sneakers. I fit in with the performers, more so than the crowd. As the day went on I kept my eyes on the entrance at the side of the stage, and I started to notice that some of the guys who had performed were walking out and watching other bands. In those days things were pretty laid-back. They didn’t distribute official passes or laminates to the band members and road crew. If you belonged there, you just went about your business. Most people abided by the rules.

  Not me.

  I watched musicians walking in and out, in and out, offering nothing more than a nod or wave to security as they passed by. Then it dawned on me.

  Shit… I think I can get in there!

  So I walked up to the stage entrance, bold as hell, and looked one of the security guys right in the eye. He gave me a quick, visual once-over, head to toe, and nodded approvingly. I returned the gesture, didn’t even smile (couldn’t break character, after all), and walked on by.

  Just like that, there I was, backstage at the New York Pop Festival.

  Now I had a dilemma: Watch the show from the best seat in the house, right next to the speakers? Or hang out backstage and try to chat up my idols?

  A little of both, maybe?

  Next thing you know, I was sitting at a cafeteria table with John Kay, the lead singer, songwriter, and guitar player for Steppenwolf. We only talked for a few minutes, and it was cordial enough, but as John got up and walked away, he passed a security guard and pointed back at me. I couldn’t quite hear him, but I could read his lips.

  “Who is that fuckin’ guy?”

  Not wanting to attract attention to myself, I slipped out of the room, exited the backstage area, and took a more discreet position in a hallway between the stage and the dressing rooms. It was all very loose and informal (and let’s be candid—a huge percentage of the people involved with the show, from performers to roadies, were high or stoned or tripping or drunk). I figured as long as I didn’t cause any trouble, no one would bother to kick my ass out of there.

  This proved to be true. I fit in so well that after about forty-five minutes of hanging out, somebody came over to me and said, “Hey, man, what band are you with?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, tried to play it cool.

  “I’m not with any band. I’m just hanging out.”

  The dude smiled a half-baked, pot-headed smile.

  “You ever work as a roadie?”

  “A few times.”

  This was true, if you considered setting up your own equipment to be roadie work.

  “Cool,” he said, gesturing for me to follow. “Let’s go.”

  We walked down a hallway, through a curtain, and onto the stage, where I proceeded to set up drums for Mitch Mitchell, the vaunted drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I couldn’t believe it! This was like a dream job, handling the equipment for one of the best drummers in the world, and doing it just a few feet from where Hendrix would be standing a short time later. I tried to maintain my composure, even as Hendrix’s appearance drew near and the stage began to bustle with activity. I was working quietly with one of the band’s “real” roadies, putting the kit together, when suddenly someone appeared at my side. A skinny white guy with a beard and a headband, he began tinkering with the kit, making subtle adjustments and occasionally tapping at the skins with his fingertips.

  I figured he was just another member of the crew, until I heard the other roadie say, “Hey, Mitch. Which snare you want to use tonight?”

  And then it dawned on me.

  Are you shitting me? I’m setting up Mitch Mitchell’s drums… with Mitch Mitchell himself?! How cool is that?

  You’d think a kid who worshipped all things Hendrix would have recognized the guy’s drummer, but I knew Mitch mostly from album jackets
and other photos, most of which had depicted him with a towering white man’s afro. Apparently he’d opted for a style change shortly before the New York Pop Festival.

  I stopped everything and dropped the smooth façade.

  “Mr. Mitchell…,” I stammered. “Man, I love your music.”

  He smiled, gave me a cool little nod, and put out his hand for me to shake.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  And that was it. We finished putting together the kit, and the show went on. The entire time I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I mean, just two years earlier I’d gotten my first Hendrix album; played it till it warped. Now here I was, at the side of the stage, just a few feet from the man himself, having helped set up the equipment for his drummer.

  It was almost like I was part of the show. I was so starstruck that I could have died on the spot and gone to heaven happy.

  As the show went on I totally lost track of time; I also lost track of the people with whom I had come to the show, a development that bothered me only at the end of the evening, when I realized I had no way to get home. At that time of night there was no public transport readily available from Randall’s Island, and I didn’t have the money for cab fare. So I walked out of the Downing Stadium parking lot and put my thumb in the air. The very first driver that went by hit his brakes and pulled over.

  “Where to, buddy?”