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roadie. I was the worst drunk and drug addict out of that whole crew, and that included the musicians. When Paul Westerberg—a man who could consume absolutely superhuman amounts of alcohol—thinks you’re an out-of-control drunk, you’d better believe that you’ve made an impression.
    And so I was cut loose in New York like some sad, drunken hobo. I told myself I didn’t really care, but the truth was that I was scared and a little resentful that my friends were on their way to rock music stardom and I wasn’t. I felt left behind. Within a year of being with the Chili Peppers, I had gone from band manager to road manager to roadie to fired. It was not a good career trajectory. With some money in my pockets, I drifted around Times Square for a week before I headed to Boston for an aimless seven days. I stayed drunk. Eventually, though, it was time to come home to L.A. I had no idea what waited just around the corner for me.

A MONSTER COMES TO LIFE
    B ack home in Los Angeles, after my failure as part of the Chili Peppers crew, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be or what I should do. Anthony and I had ditched the La Leyenda with back rent owed. He found new quarters and I stayed where I could, but we were okay with each other. In May of 1984 Flea and Anthony invited me to go along with them to see Van Halen play a three-night run at the San Diego Sports Arena, and I jumped at the chance. For one thing, it was a solid conformation that we were still friends after the debacle of my time on the road with them.
    We drove down the 5 freeway from Los Angeles, a long, traffic-choked slog through the city and its outer suburbs that didn’t lighten up until we hit the coast and saw the vast shimmer of the Pacific Ocean to our right and the buff-colored hills of Camp Pendleton to our left. I sat in the backseat with a bottle of vodka, a bag of coke, and a couple balloons of heroin. It was a long time to be cooped up in a car, and I was wrecked before we reached Orange County. To amuse myself, I sang. I didn’t think Anthony and Flea could hear me, but they interrupted me midchorus.
    “What song is that, dude?” Anthony asked.
    “It’s just a song. It doesn’t have a name.”
    “It’s good,” said Flea. “And you can actually carry a tune.”
    It was a nice compliment and it felt good. In the back of my head, I had always thought about being in a band, but a singer? I hadn’t really entertained that notion on any kind of serious level—despite the brief stint in the downtown art-noise band a few years earlier. Through Anthony and Flea, I became acquainted with a guy named Pete Weiss. He was a drummer and he could be combative. We were about as different from each other as two guys could possibly be when it came to our dispositions, but in some ways, were incredibly similar. Headstrong. My old friend Chris Hansen knew him from Los Angeles City College, where they had both attended classes, and, now the two of them had cooked up the idea to start a band.
    One night, Pete came by the pad and told me, “Chris and I started a group.”
    “Great,” I said. “Chris is a good guitar player.”
    “You’re going to be the singer.”
    “What? You’ve never even heard me.”
    “Chris says you were great in that band you guys used to have. Don’t worry about it. The worst that can happen is that you’ll fuck up.”
    I was no stranger to that, so what did I have to lose? Besides, from the time I had posed with my little acoustic guitar and sang “Dang Me,” I had secretly wanted to be a rock star. Musicians fascinated me. I spent almost all my time with them, and music had long been my passion, but I had never pursued it with any kind of seriousness. I didn’t think I had the right look and knowing so many great musicians personally, it would be devastatingly embarrassing to fail in front of them. But after all the years I’d collected records, read rock magazines, and hung out in clubs, I thought I knew a thing