Chapter 22

Johnny put up with Joe’s shit for a while, and he and Gordon played well together onstage while Vinnie was on hiatus. We sounded great even without Vinnie. And luckily, he missed the Motörhead tour. We were supposed to play a bunch of shows, and when we were invited we thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Their singer and bassist, Lemmy Kilmister, was a legend. He was around when the Ramones were getting started and he was as much a punk rock guy as a metal guy—at least musically. Attitude-wise, he was all rock ’n’ roll. He was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and played with acid-casualties Hawkwind until he was kicked out for getting busted at the Canadian border. He looked like a biker, drank like a sailor and did more speed and coke than all the members of GBH combined. And Lemmy didn’t take any shit. He was a true warrior and a role model for punks, hardcore kids and metalheads alike. But when shit wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, he could be short-tempered and vicious.

The first show with Motörhead was at a huge stadium in New Orleans in 1986. Motörhead were supporting Orgasmatron, the album with a snarling locomotive on the cover, and before the show they were setting up a train that was going to come out during the set. The road crew spent all fucking day building the thing, so we didn’t get to sound-check. Five minutes before the doors opened, they were still fucking around with the train.

Phil Anselmo was up front going crazy because Johnny was playing guitar. We were ripping it up. After 20 minutes, Motörhead cut our power. The amps and mic went dead, and we couldn’t even thank the crowd properly. I got mad and threw my water bottle at the soundboard.

Maybe they cut us off because they were afraid we would upstage the headliner. It was a bad introduction to Motörhead, and it was about to get worse. We had a lot of fans in the crowd and they felt cheated that we played such a short set. Playing to an angry hardcore crowd can be an exercise in futility.

When Motörhead got onstage, Lemmy pulled all his classic moves. He had the mic up front, tilting down, and was craning his neck up to sing. Some of the kids who were pissed about our abbreviated show jumped onstage and knocked into the microphone stand. Lemmy said, “What’s all this bullshit punk rock shit?”

He was being a big dick, and the kids in the place retaliated by throwing coins, lighters and beer cans at the band. Lemmy threw the mic stand into the crowd, the lights came on and Motörhead walked off. The crowd flipped out, tore the monitors off the stage and trashed some of the amps. A bunch of kids went outside and tipped Motörhead’s bus over.

The next day we got a call that we were off the tour, as if it was our fault that the crowd rioted. They took the Cro-Mags instead and that’s the tour that broke the Cro-Mags out of the local scene and gave them the national success they were striving for, while we returned home. It was demoralizing because we knew we deserved to be up there.

Years later, our friends Dropkick Murphys got a slot opening for Motörhead. Singer/bassist Ken Casey was excited.

“That’s awesome that they asked you and all,” I told him. “But just listen. If you go over too well with the crowd they’re going to cut you off.”

“No way! Not Motörhead. They’re awesome!” Ken said.

Sure enough, Dropkick Murphys were playing at Irving Plaza in New York and 10 minutes into their set Motörhead cut them off. Ken was pissed. He ran backstage and started yelling. “Fuck you, you pieces of shit! We’re off this tour right fuckin’ now! This is bullshit.” From that point on, Motörhead never cut Dropkick Murphys’ set short because they needed them on the bill. Motörhead had dipped in popularity and Dropkick Murphys were doing great. Although I’d badmouthed the guy over the years, I was bummed when Lemmy died in 2015. The guy could be a dick, but he was still a legend. Respect.

At some point on the Cause For Alarm Tour, we played a show in San Francisco, which was Maximumrocknroll’s home turf.

“If Timmy Yohannan shows up, the first person to knock him out gets $50!” I said. And I meant it.

Timmy did show up, but I couldn’t let anyone deck him because we had no idea what he looked like or how old he was. We met the fucking guy and saw he was an old man.

Fuck, if we hit this guy we’re going to kill him! I thought.

He and I sat down and had a long talk. It was actually a good conversation.

“Whoa, you guys are nothing like I imagined you to be,” he told me.

“You know, we can see what’s going on here and it’s very different than what goes on in New York,” I told him again.

I thought that we were cool and that Maximumrocknroll was going to say something nice about us—finally. But the next time we were in the magazine they were still talking shit about us. It was frustrating because we met the guy, we were straight up with him and he seemed cool. And then he talked shit when we weren’t around. Who knows what got him back on his high horse? When he went to our show maybe he saw some knuckleheads from his scene causing trouble. I was done trying to make nice with the magazine. They obviously had an agenda, and you can only bang your head against the wall so many times before you realize you’re probably giving yourself brain trauma.

That San Francisco show was memorable for a couple of reasons. Amy, who had been hanging out in San Francisco, was at the concert and came backstage to say hello. I was surprised since we had been split up for a while, but I was happy to see her. We talked about the problems we had when we were together and reminisced about some of the good, funny experiences we shared. The longer we hung out, the more attraction we felt. We got back together and then Amy went to Europe for a few months. I don’t remember this, but Amy said that while she was gone, Vinnie introduced me to some girl and I started dating her. She didn’t find out about it until years later.

I still don’t know if that’s true, as I was so fucked up on drugs at the time.

I talked to Amy while she was in Europe and told her that she had to come home right away or I was going to do something stupid. That worried her so she came back, but she didn’t tell me she was coming. She surprised me at one of our shows in New York. That night we went up to the roof together and talked. Then we started kissing and one thing led to another. That’s the night our daughter, Nadia, was conceived. Amy went on tour with us for a little while, mostly to make sure I was okay, and then she left to do her own thing.

The last major date on the Cause For Alarm Tour was the No Speed Limit Festival with Voivod and a bunch of bands. That was the beginning of the end for Jonny Sanchez. The show was at the Spectrum in Montreal in November, 1986. We did a good show and went over well. After the concert, our roadie, Rob Romero—a Puerto Rican guy from Brooklyn—was speeding along on an icy Canadian highway. We were singing Simon & Garfunkel’s “Slip Slidin’ Away” like fuckin’ idiots. Rob skidded and jerked the wheel hard. He tried steering the other way. Bad move. I looked out the window and saw the trailer fishtailing towards us. In these situations your mind works faster than your body. I didn’t have time to move, but I thought, Oh, shit! This isn’t good.

The trailer crashed into the side of our van. We skidded across the icy highway and shot out into a lake. The front part of the van was in the water up to the hood. I had one of my pit bulls with me, Warrior, and he flew through the window and into the lake. He was the nicest dog until he hit that freezing water, and then he wanted to kill everyone in sight. I was trying to keep him calm while I did a head count to make sure everyone was still in the van. We had all flown around a bit, but everyone was okay.

When the van went into the lake, the trailer snapped off and all of our gear fell out. We went back up to the freeway and packed all our stuff back in. While we were picking up the last pieces of gear, a car came out of nowhere and crashed into the side of the trailer, scattering our shit all over the highway again. We had to wait for a tow truck, which pulled the van out of the freezing water. We reloaded the trailer with whatever we could salvage, but most of our gear was destroyed—drums, guitars and amps all smashed to bits.

We were shivering and covered in mud when the police showed up. They towed the van and trailer and helped us get to a hotel. We tried a few places in town, but no one wanted to let us stay there because Warrior was growling and barking at everyone. Finally, one hotel agreed to take us with the dog and we had a restless couple hours.

The freakiest thing is that before we went to play the No Speed Limit Festival, Amy had a nightmare in which my van was sitting on a dock and everyone in the band fell through holes in the dock. In the dream, Amy got a talisman and ran toward me to give it to me so I wouldn’t fall in. But just as she approached, a hole opened up and I tumbled through. The only thing left on the dock was my van. Amy tried to convince me not to go on the tour, but I said it was only a dream and she was probably just nervous about me leaving her. Besides, it was a great opportunity for us, being on the same bill as Voivod. Before we left to play the festival, Amy bought me a talisman. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

We went home angry and dejected. Jonny Sanchez stayed with me for a bit in a squat on Avenue C and 3rd Street. I was pissed about our bad fortune and feeling pretty fucking sorry for myself. I drank too much, took too many drugs and challenged anyone who wanted me to calm down. That scared Jonny, and he went back to Louisiana. Later, he formed the bands The Flying Saucers and Summer Wardrobe and played with Roky Erickson from the 13th Floor Elevators. So he had a pretty wild ride even after he left AF.

By the end of the Cause For Alarm Tour we were sick of being around Joe, but we couldn’t think of a solid reason to fire him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. We figured the best thing to do was to break up the band. That way Joe would have to leave, and then we could get back together without him. It seemed to make more sense at the time than kicking him out. Plus, I needed some time to figure out if and how AF could continue. A few years after Joe left, he resurfaced as the drummer for GBH.

They say when it rains, it pours. While I was trying to sort my head out, a strange thing happened. Amy told me she wanted to meet up at a coffee shop. When I sat down next to her, she smiled and looked down at the table. Then she looked at me and told me that she was pregnant and was going to have the baby. I remembered how happy I was at first when Elsie told me she was pregnant. I was even more ecstatic when Amy gave me the news that we were going to be parents. I gave her a tight hug and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t resist.

I tried to make everything work with Amy. We were back together as a couple and had been living in abandoned buildings and squats. We eventually found an apartment building on the Lower East Side that the landlord was warehousing. That was a practice where someone who wanted to sell a building left it vacant so he could sell the entire building and make more money than he could if it were mostly occupied. If there were people already living there, whoever bought the place could only raise the rent so much, but if they bought a vacant building and fixed up the apartments, the investors could hike up the rent to obscene levels. That was the beginning of the age of gentrification. The whole thing backfired because scumbags like me started squatting in the empty buildings.

That place was seriously fucked up. The landlord was violent and crazy. One time when someone was fucking with him or they owed him rent, he smashed this dude’s head into the banister and practically impaled him on a spike. Another time, Amy walked in and there was an armed robbery over drugs going on in the hallway. She had one of our dogs with her, so she just walked by and the robbers left her alone.

As happy as I was about having a baby, I was stressing out. I didn’t have the money to raise a kid, and we didn’t have health insurance. Although the warehoused apartment was pretty nice, we didn’t know how long we’d be able to live there. Still, I had my romantic moments, like one time when I had a surprise for her. When she got home I had a frying pan on the stove with a lid on it. I wanted her to think I cooked her dinner. Then when she came in, I held the pan out and lifted the lid. There was a tiny, live bunny in the pan.

I teased her that I was cooking it for dinner, which is weird considering that my stepfather did that same thing with my rabbit years earlier. But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. As cute as it was, the bunny shit everywhere. I got her another rabbit years later. This was an adult and I had no idea that it was pregnant. Amy woke me up in the middle of the night because she saw that our black and white pit bull puppies, Cowboy and Cowgirl, were playing with the tiny, newborn bunnies. She thought they were puppies because they were the same color as the dogs and was yelling, “The puppies had puppies!”

During that period I had some time to think, and Kabula and I talked quite a bit. He wanted to continue AF as a metal group and I wanted to return to a more hardcore path. Neither of us was happy with the other’s ideas, so we agreed that we’d return from the breakup with our own versions of Agnostic Front. We were both cool with it, but he didn’t follow through. He disappeared for a while, then started having kids.

Vinnie agreed to come back, but he wanted to change up the band, as did I. I called up a guy named Steve Martin, who had played with the F.U.’s in Boston, which became the Straw Dogs. Our good friend Jon Wrecking Machine kept telling me that Steve was itching to be in the band. I brought in another two guys from the Pittsburgh area, bassist Alan Peters and drummer Will Shepler. Both those guys had been in a band called Circus of Death. They flew in every weekend over the summer to rehearse and eventually became members. Vinnie and I were glad not to be in a band with Montanaro! We started writing songs for Liberty & Justice For.... Will couldn’t move to New York to work on the album since he was only 15 or 16. But he and Alan were both really into hardcore. Steve was into thrash and hardcore, so it seemed like a good fit.

Around that time, Amy and I became friends with a couple, Ian and Sue, who lived behind the building where we were squatting. Since Amy was pregnant, they invited us to stay with them at their apartment on Avenue C between 2nd and 3rd. That was helpful since AF was working on new music and I wasn’t in the house much. I wrote lyrics for five songs. Steve worked on music for seven tracks, including “Crucial Moment,” which was all his. Alan co-wrote four cuts and we covered “Crucified” by Iron Cross.

Before Agnostic Front recorded Liberty & Justice For…, Nadia was born. Amy and I planned to have the baby at a birthing center, but on April 12, 1987—early morning on Easter Sunday and three weeks early—Amy went into labor. Amy felt the baby drop and called the birthing center. She was only 15 minutes into labor, so they weren’t worried. But Amy was sure the baby was coming right away so she called again and they told us to come in.

I immediately yelled to my friend Jon Wrecking Machine to run downstairs and remove the club from the steering wheel of my Pontiac J2000! We were in a third floor walk-up, so Sue stood on one side, Jon stood on the other and I stood in the center, holding and balancing Amy as she slowly wobbled her way down the stairs. Downstairs from the apartment was a crack house, so we had to yell at all the crackheads in the hallway to get the fuck out of the way. The birthing center was on 73rd Street, so we had to drive uptown. We pulled the seat all the way back and put Amy in the front. Sue got in the back and I slammed the door, then ran around to the driver’s side. I took several deep breaths to stop myself from panting like a dog, then began the white-knuckle ride.

I went as fast as I could, but I figured we had plenty of time to get to the birthing center. From what I understood, women were usually in labor for hours when they delivered their first baby.

“Breathe, baby, breathe!” I said from the front seat, mimicking what they’d told me in the birthing meetings. Amy swore at me, and when Sue tried to help, she yelled at Sue to stop touching her.

I turned the Pontiac J2000 onto FDR Drive, and as soon as I got into the tunnel under the United Nations building, Amy let out a savage howl that would have sounded great on a punk album!

“Fuck! I can see the head!” Sue shouted.

I knew Amy was a tough chick, but the strength she exhibited was superhuman. That baby wasn’t going to wait any longer, so I had the gas pedal on the floor. The whole experience was like a scene from The Exorcist. Amy was screaming every swear word she knew and even some that didn’t exist, while making demonic snarls that freaked me out. If I had looked behind me, I swear I would have seen her head spin. Then she stopped making noise and started the breathing techniques they taught her in Lamaze class. Finally, our baby popped right out and Amy yelled, “Oh, shit!”

Once the baby was out, we still had to get to the birthing center as soon as possible since the baby and Amy were still attached by the umbilical cord.

I was freaking out. I said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going down the street the wrong way!” But I was. I corrected my mistake, and after I turned around to take a quick look at the baby, I kept driving.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Amy said.

That’s not the first word I would have thought of. I was fucking terrified! Nadia looked like a space alien. She wasn’t making any noise, but she was moving her arms and legs in an awkward way because she had just been born. It was surreal.

I told Amy to hit the baby to get her to cry.

“Drive the fucking car, Roger!” she responded as she refused.

I sped the rest of the way. The streets were empty, so we got there in about ten minutes. It turned out everything was normal. The staff came out, cut the umbilical cord and took the baby inside. We were so freaked out on that crazy ride that we never looked to see if it was a boy or a girl! Later, we got the birth certificate and under “place of birth” it didn’t list the address of the birthing center. It said “Other.” I was pissed it didn’t say “1982 Pontiac J2000.”

The whole experience was insanely emotional. When I was a punk teenager, I built a shell around me to keep myself from being vulnerable. I could see out, but no one could get in. Occasionally, I peeled back the protective layers and exposed myself a little, like when I started seeing Amy or when I was having a heart-to-heart with Rudy, who was just as fucked up as I was. But when I looked at Nadia sleeping peacefully in her crib, I went through a tornado of emotions. It hit me how beautiful this little girl was. I was an emotional mess, but I was so mesmerized by this precious little girl.

As joyful as I was about the birth of my daughter, I was going through a major transition, so I was worried and distracted. I wanted to keep doing Agnostic Front, but I had to support Amy and my daughter and I wasn’t making enough money to pay rent. I didn’t want Nadia to grow up squatting. I wasn’t just living for myself anymore. I couldn’t get by on panhandled money and makeshift living conditions. I had to be a provider, which meant growing the fuck up and figuring out how to take care of my family.