That certain summer I spent a lot of time at the home of one of my best friends, Brian, who introduced me to a life changer . . . the hottest band in the world: KISS! When I heard KISS Alive! I was mesmerized. It made my childhood favorites, B. J. Thomas and Paul Simon, pale in comparison. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “Me & Julio” were lightweight fun, but this had a heavy fucking vibe. It rocked. I was instantly hooked—not only on the music but also on the record cover itself: the artwork, the gatefold, the weird and wild stylized makeup. All of it was the total shit!
For hours on end we jammed Alive! while pretending to be KISS. We were in Cobo Hall one minute, the auditorium of the local high school the next. We could draw this up any way we wanted: endless possibilities. With KISS, I discovered something way cooler than smoking cigarettes or drinking booze, both of which I’d already experimented with by age six (more, much more, on that later). This was my new life, my new identity: being KISS—Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter. They’d formed the band in ’73, the year I was born. Like Halley’s Comet announcing Mark Twain’s arrival, KISS affirmed mine. (Little did I know then that I would someday open for them when Death Punch toured Germany. Ain’t life a kick?)
To his parents’ dismay, Brian and I performed the entire album repeatedly: “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Cold Gin,” “Strutter” . . . all of them. I spent all day perfecting my air-drumming skills to “100,000 Years,” which featured an eleven-minute Peter Criss drum solo (self-indulgent . . . of course, that’s why I loved it). It occurred to me that this was what KISS got to do every single day. What a life . . . the life of a rock star. Not only did you get to be on a stage in a big arena with tons of people screaming, you also got to perform a solo and be the star of the show for one shining moment. What could be cooler than that? I returned home with one mission in mind: to collect every KISS record.
Around this time, the single “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” was released off the Dynasty LP. I received the 45 for Christmas, along with what would be the most important gift I would ever get: a box containing something that would help define my role in life. It was a BIG box. I already had a bicycle. Whatever could it be . . . ?
I tore into the Christmas wrapping, mutilating the cardboard box. Was it? Could it be . . . in fact, it was: a seventy-nine-dollar drum set from Sears. Good ol’ Grandma Evie, Mom’s mother, had rocked me this incredible gift. Even though it was obvious she liked my sister more, and even though I would now have to let her kiss me without struggling to escape, it was fucking worth it. This must be what Picasso felt like when he got his first paint set; how Jordan felt when he got his first basketball; how Pee-wee Herman felt when he got his first pair of white bucks. I now had my own drums. Peter Criss . . . look out, baby, here I come!
All I did the rest of the day was bang on that piece-of-crap drum kit. It could have been two oatmeal boxes and a tin can—I didn’t care. It was all mine.
When the day wound down from drumming, I wandered upstairs to the stereo where I put on my second-favorite gift from that memorable Christmas of ’79: the “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” 45. I listened to it twenty times in a row. Excessive, I admit, but excess would be my “normal” for the rest of my life. I lay on the floor behind the stereo with my upper body pinned between the stereo and wall. What a great Christmas. A drum set and KISS. Both were like drugs to me, pushing my emotions to the extreme—way cooler than getting drunk or smoking stolen cigs.
It wasn’t long before Brian and I decided it was time to put on a KISS concert for my neighborhood buds. We dressed up like them, with borrowed stage makeup from my folks. Brian had an improvised costume, but Dad made me one with silver metallic material and red fur trim. Brian played the plastic KISS guitar I’d gotten for my birthday, and I banged the shit out of the Sears drum kit. I pretended to be Peter Criss—rocking at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. In reality, I didn’t keep time very well, but it didn’t matter. It was all about the show. The guest of honor at the concert was none other than the wonderful lady who purchased the seventy-nine-dollar Sears special . . . Grandma Evie. Brian and I rocked through song after song, and when we finished, we smeared our makeup, thrashed the gear around, and ended it all with me throwing my drumstick into the “crowd” of eight—beaning Grandma in the head. How’s that for appreciation?
Not long after, Brian called with some amazing news: KISS was coming to Evansville to play at Roberts Stadium! His mom was taking him, and hopefully I could come, too. I went home super stoked. My parents couldn’t say no, knowing how much it meant to me.
“No. Absolutely not.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
“But why? Brian’s mother is taking him.”
“Good . . . he can tell you all about it.”
You can bet I pitched a fit, but nothing I did or said would change their minds. To this day, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t let me go. Perhaps they were worried about me being around a bunch of rowdy teenagers who were stoned . . . who knows? You’ve read about how families get brutally slaughtered by one of their kids? The thought occurred to me. I figured I could bury their bodies in our shitty unfinished basement and no one would be the wiser. Instead I returned to school to break the news to Brian, who managed to show a little compassion (easier to do when you’re the one going).
“Oh, man, that sucks.”
I interpreted that to mean: “I’ll bring you back a shirt and tour program—documenting what a great fucking time I had while your sorry ass sat at home.”
The concert came and went. I couldn’t believe I’d missed that incredible show. To make up for my disappointment, a few months later Dad bought concert tickets. Finally, a big stadium show.
“Who is it, Dad? AC/DC? REO Speedwagon?” Both were coming to Evansville.
“Hall and Oates.”
Kill me fucking now! “Who . . . ?”
“You know . . . ‘Rich Girl,’ ‘I Can’t Go for That,’ ‘Private Eyes.’”
I’d missed the greatest rock ’n’ roll show ever . . . but as a consolation prize, I was going to see something called Hall & Oates! Yippee-skippy-the-fuck-doo. To add another layer of shit icing to this inedible disappointment cake, I learned we would also be taking my half-blind, doddering Grandma Evie—yes, the same one who bought me the drum set. (This may come as a shock, but sometimes I could be an ungrateful turd.)
When the big day arrived, we set out for Roberts Stadium, which I was surprised to see was still standing after KISS had reportedly annihilated it. This was going to be one of the longest nights of my life. Fuck!
Boy, was I wrong. The concert began with G.E. Smith strolling up and down the aisles through the audience, wailing on his wireless, scorching electric blues guitar. G.E. led the Saturday Night Live band for years. The atmosphere was electric, too. The stage lights were blinding. And the biggest surprise of all was that Daryl Hall and John Oates played and sang their asses off. Pop icons, they had some serious songs, lots of them—one big hit after another. It was a great show. It wasn’t KISS, not by a long shot. But it was live music, really loud, with a huge stadium jammed full of eight thousand cheering fans, and I loved it.
I decided then and there: someday I’d rock a stadium full of admiring fans.
CHAPTER 3
THE WAY OF THE FIST
2005
Funny how childhood fantasies never quite square with eventual reality. And when it comes to being in a band, a cohesive and affable group of guys performing music they love, the fantasy is light-years away from what really goes on behind the scenes.
We went into the studio with Ivan to begin laying down vocals on the record. Having had all the music tracks completed, we needed his vocals and his lyrics to finish them. It’s not that we were incapable of writing lyrics, but for this to be what we needed it to be, it required Ivan to sing things that meant something to him personally. And, believe me, he had an infinite well of pain, a seemingly bottomless pit from which he could draw on
experiences that would resonate with other like-minded souls—deep enough to keep feeding his creativity through dozens of great songs to come.
He started banging them out one by one, and, right from the start, he was killing it in the studio. We canceled his plane ticket back to Denver, holding him hostage till he finished the record. It had taken some real coaxing just to get him to LA for the audition. Now that we had him, we weren’t letting him go. We decided to keep the magic flowing.
Many times he would write on the spot and lay the stuff down. There were only a few times he got stuck and needed help on a line. This dude was fucking incredible and nailed everything. He was so passionate about perfecting his vocals that if he messed up, he’d scream “Fuck!” ten times and punch the stool.
We made sure there was no short supply of booze while we watched him record. Matt and I always managed to knock back a few: beer, vodka, you name it. Ivan wasn’t opposed to drinking—far from it. However, Zoltan always hated it and was pretty vocal about it.
The exception was one night, after finishing recording vocals, when Matt and Ivan went back to Zo’s apartment. The three were listening to the day’s recording and getting hammered—even Zo. That led to them flipping the furniture and moshing in his apartment. It was an important moment of bonding, but it was also a preview of what would become the band’s standard operating procedure. The old saying is: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That old saw doesn’t apply to booze, because whatever bond was formed that night would later be torn apart by the same alcohol that fueled it.
When we finished recording what would become The Way of the Fist, we added another guitar player to round out the lineup: a nineteen-year-old kid named Caleb Bingham, a real prodigy who could shred on drums and sing, as well as crush the guitar. Not long after we started rehearsing with him, the age gap between him and us older, jaded farts became too big to ignore. Caught up in what a great player he was, we’d disregarded a potential problem: Caleb wouldn’t be able to hang in the venues we’d be playing in on tour, since he wasn’t old enough to be in them in the first place. Plus the disparity of life experience, in general, was also too great to ignore. No matter how much we wanted him to be part of the band, it simply wasn’t going to work.
We decided to address the situation before we got signed, and I knew just the guy to call: Jason Hook. Jason and I had been in another band together. A Canadian without a green card for his first decade in the States, he was an incredible guitarist. Unfortunately, he was touring with Alice Cooper and wasn’t available. So I turned to the best guy I knew who was available: Darrell Roberts.
The one good thing I got out of the W.A.S.P. experience—the “sting” of which I’ve already explained—was my connection with Darrell. He was a seasoned vet on guitar, having made numerous tours with W.A.S.P. The timing was right, too, since he’d recently ended his association with them and was looking for another gig. I’d helped get him a construction job with me, so we were hanging out every day at work. I played him The Way of the Fist record, and he loved it. When I asked if he’d be interested in joining, he leaped at the chance.
I called Zo and told him I had the guy: someone who’d been in the trenches and knew what to expect, not to mention a good guitarist with good stage presence. Turned out Zoltan had always liked Darrell, so it was an easy sell.
Now part of the fold, we decided to write one more song with Darrell—swapping it out for one we’d written with Caleb. It was important for him to feel like part of the record we’d recorded. He gave Ivan his song idea on a cassette tape. Remember, it was 2006, but Darrell was still into cassettes. (I always thought that was funny, but it was so like him.) The song, “White Knuckles” (“I’m taking back control with my knuckles”), was a hard-edged rocker and it turned out great. That was the final piece of the album, which we sent to our friend, Logan Mader, to mix. Logan was the former guitarist for Machine Head on the first couple of records back in the ’90s and toured with Soulfly in ’98. His name would lend even more legitimacy to the project.
We were now close to having a mixed and mastered album, but the band still needed a name. It seemed all the good ones were taken. We came up with a long list of candidates. Wish I could remember some of them, but believe me when I say they shared one thing in common: they were beyond lame. We finally decided on Five Finger Death Punch, a reference to the Touch of Death—the Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique that appeared in the Tarentino flick Kill Bill. With Zo’s martial arts background, he really pushed for it . . . so FFDP it was.
Our first gig was at the Wiltern Theatre, a landmark art deco building on Wilshire Boulevard in LA. The British metal band DragonForce was scheduled to be the headliner, and because Darrell was friends with one of the band’s members, we got an invite to appear on the bill—along with All That Remains and Horse the Band.
It was a pretty big deal, since we were not yet signed and no one, except people on MySpace, had heard any of our songs.
Dad flew to LA for the gig and I invited a bunch of friends—including an older Mexican guy I’d met while drywalling, a guy I’ll call Fernando. He was a really fun guy who’d invited me to his house for dinner several times, and I couldn’t wait for Dad to meet him. We were standing out behind the venue when Fernando showed up with his nephew and a few other relatives. Unfortunately, he was falling-down drunk—literally. When Dad went to shake his hand, he staggered and would have done a face plant, but his nephew caught him in time. I was embarrassed and disappointed.
His nephew said Fernando needed to use the john. When security saw his inebriated condition, I had trouble convincing them to let him into the backstage area so he could take a piss in our bathroom, which was up two flights of stairs.
While Horse the Band performed, our band hung around outside before heading up to the dressing room for a last-minute pep talk. Ivan led the way, and I heard him yell, “Who the fuck barfed in here?” Of course it was Fernando. Ivan was so pissed I thought he was going to explode. The rest of us tried to keep from gagging while the custodial staff scooped up the mess.
An assistant stage manager stuck his head in and informed us that we had twenty-five minutes from the time we hit the stage.
“That’s twenty-five, not twenty-six. Got it?”
The policy was that even if we were in the middle of a song, once the twenty-five minutes were up, they’d pull the plug. No exceptions. We quickly regrouped and decided to cut one of our songs just to be safe.
Ivan gathered us together and went into his pump-us-up mode: “Let’s go show these motherfuckers we mean business.”
We were psyched.
I sent Dad to the lobby to hang out with Jason Hook, who had just gotten off the road from touring. They knew each other from a previous visit a decade earlier. Jason was there with his girlfriend, and the three of them stood on the mezzanine to watch the show. Though we’d practiced, it was our first real gig, and we were a little shaky. The eight hundred people in attendance were there to see DragonForce. It wasn’t until the third song that some of them actually started to get into our music. Ivan demanded they start a mosh pit, and though it was the smallest, most ineffectual mosh pit in history, a dozen or so began circling while he sang “A Place to Die” and cursed the others for not joining in. We managed to end our last song with the assistant stage manger waving wildly at us—pointing to his stopwatch. Though the gig was a mediocre success at best, we buried Horse the Band and got at least as much reaction as All That Remains.
I tracked Jason and Dad down in the mezzanine lobby. Of course, Dad said we were great, and surprisingly, Jason said, “Man, I wish I could have been part of that. That’s the kind of music I love. I’m a little jealous.” (As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you ask for!”)
We decided to stay and watch DragonForce, because we wanted to see their guitarists, Herman Li and Sam Totman. The duo was renowned for their long and high-speed solos. Their whole shtick was like a page from the Guita
r Hero III soundtrack.
Later that night, I overheard Dad talking to Ivan, who needed plenty of reassurance that he didn’t suck. “I’ve been around the music business and theater for decades, I’ve seen the best, and I’m here to tell you that you’re a born stage performer. You’re fucking awesome.” (In keeping with his dual nature, my dad’s vocabulary could be either sophisticated or street. He always said, “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t say ‘fuck.’”) He was dead serious when he told Ivan, “You’re the real deal.”
“Really?” said Ivan, who seemed to become a respectful, less angry version of himself when confronted with a potential father figure.
“You’re a natural . . . incredible charisma. You controlled that crowd like a lion tamer. And another thing . . . you don’t need to hide behind makeup or a mask . . . ever.”
Ivan had worn both when he was the lead singer for Motograter, and he’d recently been talking about doing it again. Dad’s encouragement ended the makeup-and-mask conversation then and there.
Ivan gave my Dad a hug and kissed him on the cheek. He whispered something in his ear. I found out later he said, “I don’t know about this band yet, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m taking Jeremy with me. He’s my man.”
Oh, how things would change . . . like the volatile weather.
Not long after the gig at the Wiltern, we received an offer to fly to Sedalia, Missouri, to play a show. A promoter had contacted me through MySpace, and I put him in touch with our then manager, who shall remain nameless but not blameless. They worked out the financial end of the deal. It didn’t pay a lot, but it was a chance to get away, not only from LA but also from my girlfriend, whom I had been with for almost two years.
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