C’MON! – My Story of Rock, Ruin and Revelation Read online

  Walk This Way

  I was always extremely close to my mom. She was my best friend and biggest fan. Like my dad, my mom was also raised in Tennessee and grew up in church. But whereas my dad took more of an iron hand, do as I say approach to parenting, my mom had considerably more finesse and possessed a true knack for connecting with me and my siblings. When I was about five, she heard me use the “N” word. At that age I had no idea what it even meant – I was

  merely repeating what I thought was a funny-sounding word that I’d heard someone else use. She quickly and clearly educated me of the stupidity she’d heard come out of my mouth. I immediately no longer thought it was a “funny” word. And to this day, I find few words to be as troubling. In fact, I don’t care if you’re a black rapper or a white supremacist, it’s an ignorant word.

  I fondly remember having many wonderful and heartfelt conversations with my mom as I was growing up. During many of these childhood talks we would discuss various matters of faith. From explaining the meaning and importance of being “saved” to communion to tithing, the spiritual lessons I learned from my mom have stayed with me throughout my life.

  My mom could seemingly do it all. Although I primarily remember her cooking, cleaning and creating an overall perfect home environment for our family, she also worked full-time in retail, security and banking. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t truly appreciate how demanding her gig really was until I became a parent myself. She asked very little of me as I was growing up and in return for her selfless efforts, I couldn’t even keep my room clean.

  When I think back on everything I put her through when I was a kid, it’s amazing that she never strangled me. Once, when I was in junior high she discovered some rather risqué cartoons I’d drawn in my bedroom which she found particularly disturbing. Another time, she came home early from work and caught me in my parents’ bed with a little teenage girl I’d brought home from school. But she never ratted me out to my dad. Instead, she would always calmly confront me in private to express her displeasure.

  A wise child brings joy to a father;

  a foolish child brings grief to a mother.

  Proverbs 10:1 (NLT)

  I guess the one time I really pushed her buttons was in early 1977. I was fourteen and a HUGE Aerosmith fan. At that time their single “Walk This Way” was a hot radio hit and I thought it was just about the most incredible record I’d ever heard. When a girl at school asked me to write down the lyrics to the song for her I had to play my seven inch single over and over at 33 1/3 rpm to decipher each and every one of Steven Tyler’s libido-drenched lyrics. Keep in mind, I was still a young and extremely naïve church boy at the time and I genuinely had no clue what the lyrics meant – I just thought it was a groovy tune. However, my mom knew exactly what “bleeder” and “muffin” meant, and assuming it was a song I’d written, she flipped out when she found the copy of my handwritten lyrics lying on the coffee table in the living room. In short, she nearly had a heart attack and in the words of Ricky Ricardo, I had, “a lot of esplainin’ to do!”

  If I could have just one more minute with my mom now, I would hug her and thank her from the bottom of my heart for everything she ever did for me and humbly apologize for being such an ungrateful little creep.

  I Get Around

  By my early teens it seemed that all of my peers were being allowed to attend rock concerts. Everyone that is, except me. I had to settle for second-hand accounts of outrageous performances by legendary artists the following day at school. I never got to see the real Alice Cooper Band, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad or the original Lynyrd Skynyrd lineup. However, after years of persuasion, I finally allayed my parents’ anxieties regarding rock concerts.

  After recently denying my impassioned request to attend a Kiss concert in December 1976, my parents finally gave in and allowed me to experience my first rock show (The Beach Boys) in early 1977. My parents’ primary objection to me attending rock concerts was their expectation of people in the audience freely taking drugs and openly engaging in sexual activities at these events. I thought that was ridiculous. What did my parents know anyway? They were over thirty and by my accounts that made them really old and completely uncool. But when I arrived at the concert that night with the love(s) of my life; Jackie Rogers, Sharyon Lawson and Andrea Calabria, I was amazed to discover throngs of tie-dyed clad hippies scattered throughout the 10,000 seat civic center in Lakeland, Florida – smoking dope and groping each other. Holy cow – my parents were right!

  Like The Beatles, The Beach Boys also started out as a squeaky-clean pop act in the early 1960s and later morphed into scruffy-looking longhairs, creating more experimental-type rock in ensuing years. This concert was during The Beach Boys (scruffy) “Brian’s Back” era, heralding the return of the group’s chief songwriter, producer and visionary, Brian Wilson. I’ve often joked that there are two kinds of people in the world – “John Lennon” people and “Brian Wilson” people. Although John Lennon is rightfully considered by many to be one of pop music’s all-time premier songwriters and has touched the lives of music fans in profound ways, Brian Wilson’s songs have touched me in ways few others have. I once heard a listener comment on a call-in radio show that Brian Wilson is the “Beethoven of pop music” – well put!

  The Beach Boys show was a sold-out event. And from the roar of the crowd and the undeniable fragrance of marijuana permeating the arena to the blasting music and colorful lightshow, my first concert experience proved to be fantastic.

  Evil Influence

  It was also around this time that I first recall sitting in church and hearing about the evil influence rock and roll had over its followers. Sunday after Sunday I was reminded of how rock music promoted ungodly behavior – particularly, ungodly sexual behavior. In fact, the way I heard it, rock and roll was responsible for nearly every sin and impure thought known to man. It seemed to me like that was a lot of blame to cram conveniently into one package. After all, the Bible is filled with numerous accounts of immoral human activities from thousands of years ago. Do the words Sodom and Gomorrah ring a bell? In fact, the graphic accounts of incestuous behavior between Lot and his daughters found in Genesis 19:30-38 are so outrageous that it makes an episode of Jersey Shore seem like a rerun of Full House. I’m serious – there’s some unbelievable stuff in the Bible – it’s a bona fide page-turner! Anyway, I was almost certain that many of these biblical examples of outrageous personal conduct pre-dated The Rolling Stones by at least a decade or two. As a result, I didn’t buy into the full-on, anti-rock mantra that I heard coming from the pulpit as a teenager. However, I might have connected with the message had my pastors and Sunday school teachers spent less time playing records backwards and dedicated at least a little energy towards offering an alternative.

  *******

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Initiation

  My dad’s partnership with my uncle in the chemical business proved to be a less than fruitful endeavor. In early 1977 he returned to the electronics business and took a job with the Collins Corporation, located an hour outside of Orlando. But he quickly grew weary of the one hundred-plus mile daily commute and my family soon wound up moving to Satellite Beach – a quiet little community located just south of Cocoa Beach on Florida’s east coast. After spending nearly two years settling into my new school and making new friends in Orlando, I was once again faced with having to start all over.

  Surf’s Up!

  Monday, April 4 proved to be another milestone in my life as it was my first day attending DeLaura Junior High School. Although Satellite Beach was only an hour away from Orlando geographically, I quickly found the laid-back beachside lifestyle at DeLaura to be drastically different from my drama-filled big city experience at Stonewall Jackson. There were no cops on duty at DeLaura and students wore shorts, surfer shirts and flip-flops to school. I also immediately noticed a sizable faction within the DeLaura student body who had a penchant for partying.

  Although
I was once again the “new kid” at a school where I didn’t fit in, I decided to make the best of the situation and at least try to make friends.

  About a month after arriving at DeLaura, the school held elections for the following year’s student government positions. I discovered that at DeLaura, student government was a daily class and was taken pretty seriously – at least by school administrators. The huge, double-sized classroom was set up in a similar fashion as the state or national level of the senate, with the higher ranking officials seated at the front, presiding over dozens of representatives seated at tables throughout the room. During class, students adhered to the rules of Parliamentary procedure and the classroom was so big that they even used microphones. Despite having been away from Springfield for two years, I was still a nerd and I found this all to be quite fascinating!

  Twenty-six (popular) eighth graders were vying for the fifteen seats up for grabs in the next year’s ninth grade Senate. I realized that as the “new kid” I didn’t stand a chance of ranking among the top fifteen vote-getters, but it seemed like a fantastic opportunity hopefully to make a few friends, so I entered the race as the twenty-seventh candidate. And although I knew a loss was certain, I still wanted to mount a respectable campaign.

  Initially, I expected my opponents to be sharp and astute kids. I later discovered that many were just looking for an easy “A” on next year’s report card and reasoned that student government would be less challenging than say, advanced physics. But I was serious about this. I spent hours in my bedroom after school creating eye-catching and unique jumbo-sized campaign posters – typically depicting members of Kiss urging all to “Vote for Chris!” Soon, it seemed the entire student body was asking, “Who the ‘heck’ is Chris Long?”

  When it came time to have our campaign speeches videotaped to be shown during various social studies classes the next day, I thought I needed to put on an intimidating and impressive “game face.” But to my surprise, I sat there during the videotaping and watched each candidate step up to the podium, one-by-one, look into the camera and insecurely deliver what amounted to little more than sixty seconds worth of verbal pabulum. Conversely, jaws literally dropped when it was my turn and I pulled a six-page, typed speech from my briefcase and immediately began articulating specific details of what I planned to accomplish during my first term in office. If I hadn’t yet established myself as a complete freak in front of my entire new school, I certainly had now. But I needed to make a bold impression if I was to stand even a remote chance of coming in fifteenth in the field of twenty-seven.

  As the ballots were cast on election day, I hoped for a miracle, but I’d already prepared myself for defeat. However, to the amazement of fellow classmates, teachers and myself, I came in THIRD – right behind David Fredericks and Shannon Lowe! After only a month at DeLaura, I garnered more votes than that year’s Homecoming Queen – thus ushering in the beginning of what would become my four-year reign of domination over my junior high and high school political scene.

  The “Connection” to Murder

  In my teenage days, local record shops were like rock and roll churches where kids like me went to “praise and worship.” I could spend hours on end in any record shop, flipping through bins of countless albums, studying each band, album cover, track listing and production credit. In fact, at fifteen I knew the career stats of producers like Bob Ezrin and Jack Douglas better than I knew algebraic principles. This rather dubious distinction did not go unnoticed by my parents. “You can tell me anything I want to know about those Kiss idiots, but you can’t pass math class!” my dad passionately informed me one morning after report cards had been sent home.

  When my family moved to Satellite Beach in 1977, I was delighted to discover a record shop located right in our neighborhood called The Connection. The shop was owned and operated by a guy in his early twenties, named Steve, who looked as if he could have been a stunt double for the construction worker character in the disco group, Village People. The Connection was a classic old-school record shop, offering LPs, singles, cassettes and 8-tracks. Straw mats covered the floors, rock and roll promo posters lined the walls and the aroma of strawberry incense filled the air. Aside from radio station DJs, Steve was the first guy I’d ever really met who was (kinda) in the music industry and to me, that made him really cool. And hardly a day went by when I wasn’t hanging out at The Connection after school, talking to Steve and trying to learn anything and everything I possibly could about the business.

  But I was naïve at the time to worldly evils. Hence, I initially found nothing odd about what I now recognize as the obvious sexual advances Steve made towards me. One day after school in the spring of 1977, Steve asked me to come back up to the shop around dinner time as he was expecting a late shipment that day and thought I might be interested in some of the new releases that were coming in. When I arrived, I discovered that Steve had already closed shop, and he was waiting for me outside. Without haste, he ushered me inside and immediately locked the door behind us. I then noticed that the shop windows had all been covered with brown paper. I also discovered that Steve had not, in fact, received any late shipment. Somehow, he quickly managed to navigate our conversation from the standard topic of rock and roll to body building. He then boldly confessed how “well built” he thought I was, and asked me to take off my shirt. At that point even I realized what was going on and that I needed to get out of there – fast! Using the old tried and true, “I’m late for dinner” line, I made a panicked beeline for the door. I ran out onto the sidewalk, got on my bike and sped home in record time! I felt dirty and completely creeped out and I certainly didn’t want to give further life to the experience by telling anyone. Consequently, I still occasionally visited The Connection, but never again by myself.

  I stopped by The Connection one day after school with a group of friends in September 1977. As my buddy pulled on the door, we discovered it was locked. Then I noticed a sign in the window that read, “Closed for vacation.” I thought that was odd as I hadn’t heard anything about Steve leaving town. When I arrived home a few minutes later, my sister handed me a copy the morning newspaper. “You’re NOT gonna believe this!” she exclaimed. I opened up the paper and there on the front page was a picture of Steve, standing in a courtroom, wearing a prison jumpsuit, in handcuffs and leg irons under the headline, “Local Store Owner Arrested for Murder.”

  I stood in my parents’ living room, speechless and trembling as I read how after a nine-month investigation, Steve had been arrested for the murder of a local male high school athlete. The details were shocking and gruesome. I thought of the time I’d spent alone with Steve in his store – especially that one particular night a few months earlier. At that point he’d already murdered one teenage boy from my neighborhood, and I easily could have been another of his victims.

  Having been found guilty of the murder, Steve is currently serving out three consecutive life sentences in a Florida prison. However, in November 2011, Steve went before the parole board, seeking an early release for good behavior. His request was denied. He will again be eligible for parole in 2016.

  The Great Debate

  My family attended various local churches in 1977. While my parents ultimately connected with a large Baptist church a few miles south of Satellite Beach, they allowed me to attend my church of choice on my own – a small neighborhood church called Inner-City Baptist. Although head Pastor H.A. Dean publicly maintained his clear disdain for rock and roll, dancing, or anything related to a syncopated beat, I was able to discern between his personal opinions and biblical truths. Oddly, even as a teenager with a burning passion for rock and roll, I could relate to his scriptural teaching and I had tremendous respect for his unwavering, hard-core, anti-world positions. In fact, I still have tremendous respect for him.

  I remember sitting in church in those days and frequently hearing how, according to Pastor Dean, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were personally responsible for the moral decaden
ce of the world. Pastor Dean never really explained exactly why Mick and Keith were responsible, but he made clear that they had drugs in their lives and a drummer in their band – which was all the ammo he needed to present his case. Pastor Dean often concluded his tirades by stating that he didn’t have time to fully address all the evils of rock and roll in that particular sermon, but he’d gladly discuss it further any other time with anyone interested in privately debating the issue. So I decided to take him up on the invitation.

  My buddy Jim and I rode our bikes to Inner-City one morning during summer vacation in 1977. Resembling Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, Pastor Dean welcomed me and Jim into his office and the three of us sat down for a quiet and casual, hour-long conversation. My intention was not to be disrespectful, but to merely further discuss the issue. Likewise, Pastor Dean was also very respectful towards me and Jim. Calmly, he began offering a bit more insight regarding his view of how rock musicians and rock music glorified drug use and promiscuous sexual behavior – and once again he placed almost the entire burden of blame squarely on the shoulders of Mick and Keith. I then counter-offered examples of various pop/rock songs which I felt offered positive, sometimes even spiritual messages. I was amazed by how cool Pastor Dean was and how receptive he was to hearing what I had to say. In the end, I think we each had a better understanding of the other’s position. However, these days I realize that he was more on-point than I gave him credit for at the time.