CHAPTER 9

DANCIN’ ON THE EDGE

You’re always running for your life, You can’t escape. You fall deeper in hell. —“DANCIN’ ON THE EDGE” (WRITTEN BY LITA FORD)

I WAS IN CALIFORNIA AND STARTING TO WORK ON MY SECOND ALBUM when I got a call from Tony Iommi. We had kept in touch since that first night in Germany. He was still on tour with Black Sabbath, and we saw each other more often. It was on one of those occasions that I first met Ronnie James Dio. Ronnie stopped me one night in a hotel hallway. “Hey, if you ever need a place to go, you are welcome in my room.” He meant it as a friendly gesture in case I was ever in trouble. It left me confused. “Thank you,” I told him. “That’s so kind. I’m okay, but I will take you up on that if I’m ever afraid.” I felt like he was watching out for me the way a big brother would. Ronnie James Dio was a very down-to-earth, caring soul, as well as an incredible vocalist. I was very lucky for his invitation and felt his warmth as a human being.

The first time my parents met Tony, they thought he was really odd. My folks were the most understanding people I knew and had graciously hosted my musician friends for years, so if they thought someone was off, it meant something. He would come for dinners at my parents’ and sometimes we would sleep in the back house for the night. He would do weird things like jiggle the doorknob of the main house and then walk around to the rear entrance. My mother said to me in her thick accent, “Lita, I think he has a wheel loose.” Boy, was she right. I was in love, though. What I didn’t realize was that I was in love with the rock star, not the man.

As I would arrive at Tony’s hotel in LA, I would always see another woman either coming or going. I assumed it was a second girlfriend or a drug dealer, and I didn’t really care which it was. I always wondered who this “mystery woman” was, even though she never spoke to me. I didn’t ask him about it, but she and I knew we were both there to see Tony.

When I read Tony’s book, I found out he was still married but not yet divorced when we started dating. I felt sorry for his wife and daughter, even though I had never met them. He would spend hundreds of dollars a day on drugs but wouldn’t pay child support. I thought it was horrible for a father not to want to support his child. He seemed like he couldn’t be bothered with the little girl, and I hated that about him.

WHEN I WAS working on my second album, Dancin’ on the Edge, I rented Shep Gordon’s house in Hawaii to write songs and get away. Shep is Alice Cooper’s manager, and I had met Alice when I was in the Runaways, so Shep was no stranger to me. I took my bass player Gordon Copley with me to write; his wife joined us shortly afterward. One afternoon, while Gordon and I were working on a song, I looked on the wall behind him and saw the biggest flying cockroach I’d ever seen in my entire life. I said, “Gordon, turn around. Look on the wall.” Gordon was a little bit like Ron Wood—a good dude but a funny character. He didn’t know how to handle this gigantic roach. It wasn’t the kind of bug you would just step on. Gordon looked at the bug and then turned back around and looked at me and said nothing. I yelled at him, “Fuck, Gordon! Do something!”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Hit him with your bass!”

He didn’t like that idea.

I remembered seeing a bunch of magazines in the bathroom, so I led Gordon there. We went through the pile, contemplating: “Do we hit him with a Better Homes and Gardens? Or a Popular Mechanics?”

While we were trying to decide, the roach had crawled up Gordon and was on his chest.

“Gordon! Look!” I screamed, pointing to his chest.

Gordon flipped out and managed to knock the roach off his chest with the Better Homes and Gardens. It was like a roach rodeo. They were so big, you could saddle them up and ride them.

I’d never seen a bug like that before. Fucking prehistoric. Well, I soon learned the entire house was infested with flying Hawaiian cockroaches. We thought about going to a hotel, but I had paid so much money for this place, we ended up staying up all night, beating cockroaches and sleeping all day. When Gordon’s wife, Lorraine, got there, she went to management and had the place sprayed. Why hadn’t we thought of that? It wasn’t exactly the most creative of environments.

WE RECORDED Dancin’ on the Edge in New York and Philadelphia. Toni was still my tech at the time, and we stayed in Philly to record with the producer Lance Quinn and to be close to recording studios like the Power Station in New York City and the Warehouse and Studio 4 in Philly. We lived at a place called One Buttonwood Square. We always said it like we were Bugs Bunny: “One Buttonwood Squwah.” We used to run up the Rocky steps and pretend that we were in shape. Then we’d go to the bar.

One Buttonwood Square was a cool little place. It just so happened Jon Bon Jovi and his bandmates lived close by and were also recording. Jon and Richie Sambora would come over to our place to hang out. We’d go to the corner bar, the Rose Tattoo Café, to have a drink. We’d have a lot of drinks sometimes, sit and talk music, and dream about how we were going to be big someday. We became good friends during those months.

One night, we were all in New York and staying at the Broadway Plaza Hotel. We went out to a club called Traxx, and Jon and Richie brought Aldo Nova. Aldo played keys on my Dancin’ on the Edge album. Jon loved his red wine, but he had too much that night. As we were coming home from the club, he was clumsy, like a puppy when you first bring him home. I thought it was kind of cute. Soon enough Jon and I started making out. Richie caught on real quick and started making out with Toni. Aldo watched, sipping his red wine, as we tried to fit him in too. We all moved it to the bedroom, which had two beds. Jon and I took one bed, Richie and Toni took the other. Aldo stood in the doorway watching, still with wine in hand. Jon started feeling a little sick and began puking in the corner, right on the bedroom carpet. Toni hopped off of Richie as if to say, Here, Lita. Try mine. So I got in bed with Richie. Holy shit. Richie Sambora is the king of swing, I must say. Jon recovered from puking and Aldo finally made his way into the action, and it turned into girl-on-guy fun at the Broadway Plaza Hotel. We checked out the next morning, leaving the hotel room a complete disaster with red-wine puke in the corner.

DURING THIS TIME I was really falling into my own style. I was breaking away from the image I had created for Out for Blood, which was influenced by Neil Merryweather, and I was coming into my own as a vocalist. But I had made my bed and now I had to lie in it: I was the chick that played guitar. Not everyone believed in my vocal abilities, especially my producer. We had the time of our life making the record, but I would soon realize that it was also going to be one of the biggest challenges of my life, mainly because I was female.

Jon Bon Jovi had turned me on to the producer Lance Quinn. I couldn’t stand him. Personally, I thought he was useless as a producer, but I was stuck with him for that album because of Jon’s recommendation. He wanted his friend who thought he was Edward Van Halen to play guitar on “Gotta Let Go,” my single on the album, but he didn’t tell me. He was also pushing a guy named Geoff Leib on me to play keyboards. I couldn’t understand it. I already had Aldo Nova playing keys, and he was great! Why the fuck would I need more keyboard players on an album like Dancin’ on the Edge? It wasn’t a keyboard-oriented album.

I had a great band for Dancin’ on the Edge. It was one of my favorite groups that I’ve ever put together. Along with Randy on drums, I also had Bobby Donati and Gordon Copley. Bobby and I fit together real well. He was a singer and was very intelligent. Together we all looked hot.

On our final night of recording the album, I left the studio and the album was done. The record was supposed to have been turned in to the label the next day. Everyone went home except Lance. “I have a few last-minute things to clean up,” he said. After we all said our good-byes, Lancey boy put in his friend’s solo on “Gotta Let Go.” I didn’t know until after the album was mastered. Personally, I don’t think Lance would have done that if I was a dude. In my opinion, he had his mind set on his buddy playing on my record, and because I was female, he took advantage of me. Even Lance Quinn couldn’t wrap his head around the chick who played guitar. It blew my mind that after all I’d accomplished I still didn’t have control over the production of my own album.

Dancin’ on the Edge was the first album that actually crossed over to the other side. I became a chick on guitar with credibility, and I wasn’t just a piece of ass. They actually managed to get me into clothes for the album cover. It didn’t change anything in terms of how well I played guitar. The record label executives tried to change me and make me into this cutesie little pop star, but I just didn’t have it in my blood to be that. I liked the raunch, and the shock value of being eccentric and playing guitar. They didn’t know how to sell that side of me. But obviously it was working, because I was nominated for a Grammy. But still, the fight between me and my manager, Allen Kovac, and my label continued.

AFTER RECORDING THE album, I went to London for a few months with my band to shoot a video and do some gigs. The video was for the song “Gotta Let Go.” While we were filming, my band and I were living in a house in Marble Arch on the West End of London. We went out to a bar called the Funny Farm quite often. It was a speakeasy open from midnight to seven A.M. that catered almost exclusively to musicians. A man named Frank Coe ran the bar. He was infamous in London and so was that bar. It was in the basement of a Greek hotel, and it only held eighty to a hundred people. You would have to knock at the door, and they would open the window to see your face. If they knew you, they would let you in; if not, they would tell you to fuck off. All the big British bands were in there: Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Whitesnake, et cetera. I met a musician named Phil Soussan in that bar. We hit it off right away, and from then on we hung out together almost every day. Phil was between bands at the time and would later join Randy Castillo in Ozzy Osbourne’s post-Sabbath group. (Ozzy had split from Black Sabbath in 1979.) I would be working with my band, but at night we would meet at a Mexican restaurant to do shots and then go to a bar called Stringfellows or end up at the Funny Farm. This lasted for a few months, but then I had to hit the road again. At the time my main relationship was with rock and roll.

AS FOR TONY and me, we saw each other only on and off because we both traveled so much. He surprised me one day, however, when he said to me, “I want to take you to England to meet me mum.” His father had passed away, and he rarely talked about him.

Tony had his keyboard player, Geoff Nicholls, whom he nicknamed Nick, with him at all times. Nick was never onstage with Black Sabbath—they kept him hidden off to the side of the stage during the shows. He came with us to England when we went to visit Tony’s mom. Nick appeared to be Tony’s safety blanket. He would laugh at Tony’s jokes, do his drugs, and seemed to say yes to anything Tony asked. I didn’t think much of Nick. I suspect Nick didn’t like me, either. I think he was afraid that I would sweep Tony away.

Nick, Tony, and I were sitting on a jumbo jet, ready to take off for England. Boy, was I excited! And a little nervous. I was going to meet Tony’s mother. I wanted to make a good impression, and that’s all I was thinking about, when out of nowhere, as soon as the plane was in motion, Tony hauled off and punched me in the eye. For no reason! Something I said? Something I didn’t say? Who knows! It was almost like he was trying to show off to Nick and show him what a “man” he was. A real man doesn’t do that. It didn’t look like Nick was as surprised as I was.

I got up and tried to find a place to hide. Fuck, I’m on an airplane, where do I go? I told the stewardess that my boyfriend had hit me and asked her to help me find someplace where he couldn’t find me. She led me to a private area that they had curtained off for the stewardesses only. Tony came looking for me, but he gave up after a few minutes and went back to his seat. For the entire ten-hour flight from LAX to London Heathrow, I sat in the stewardesses’ station. I was devastated. My hero, my idol, the man I thought I loved, had just punched me in the eye. And I had no idea why.

My eye began to swell up, and I knew it was going to turn black and blue. The stewardess gave me some ice. When the plane landed, I planned on turning around and taking the next flight back to LAX. Tony acted like nothing had happened. I wondered if Tony had taken some drug that had made him fly off the handle and I prayed that it had worn off and he wouldn’t do it again. So I stayed, like a moron. But now I had to see his mother with a black eye.

We had to drive a couple of hours to Birmingham, where Tony had a place near his mother’s. His home was a typical English house. Wooden and lined in river rocks, it was large but not extravagant. He showed me to the master bedroom upstairs, where I put my bags. Downstairs was the living room and kitchen area, which was really nice and clearly put together by a woman.

“Tomorrow me mum is coming over,” he told me.

I figured the way to impress Tony’s mom was to cook a full-blown British meal. I was relieved that I had another day to figure out how to compose myself after what had happened. I went up the street to the butcher and bought a beautiful leg of lamb, bone in. You have to have the bone in. I also bought some sweet onions, brussels sprouts, and potatoes to roast with the leg of lamb, and a bit of mint sauce.

The next day I spent hours cooking, and I was happy because Tony left me alone. The whole time I was preparing the meal I wondered how I was going to get through the week. His mother came over that afternoon when I was just putting the final touches on the meal. She was really nice, and when we sat down to eat, she seemed impressed with what I had done. After she ate, she said, “Well, I give that dinner a ten!” I knew this meant that she didn’t just like the food, but that she also liked me.

At one point in the night Tony went to get something upstairs and I was alone with his mother. I asked her, “Did you notice my black eye?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Tony did it,” I said.

“I figured.”

“How? Why?” I wanted to know.

“His father used to do that to me.”

Everything became clear to me. I had to assume it wasn’t just drugs. It was aggression, passed down from his father. I was happy the father wasn’t around—and I’m sure his mother was too—but I had finally realized what Ronnie James Dio meant about the possibility of me needing a safe place to stay while I was with Tony. Ronnie and I bonded as friends after that.

Tony and I stayed at his house in Birmingham for a week, and, thank God, he didn’t hit me again. We returned to Los Angeles together, and I was lulled into a false sense of security. It was the first time a man had ever hit me. I stayed with him, hoping that was the end of the abuse.

TWO YEARS LATER I was still with him. While the abuse wasn’t a frequent occurrence, it happened four and five times while we were together. Each time I was shocked by his sudden and extreme violence toward me.

We would travel and get fucked up a lot. He told me he had to leave England for six months at a time so the government wouldn’t take massive amounts of income tax from him. So we would stay in California or sometimes we would crash at different places around the world. He would do cocaine to the point where he would think people were looking through the peepholes. Sometimes he would take a towel and cover the bottom of the door. I’d ask him, “Why are you doing that?”

“I don’t want people to hear or see or smell what I’m doing.” He always thought there were people in the vents, so he would close them all. He told me that sound and smells carried. He was a paranoid freak. Tony wasn’t working much at this time—most of his energy was spent on consuming outrageous quantities of drugs. There were always large peanut-butter-size jars of downers around. He would take hundreds of dollars’ worth of cocaine on a daily basis. He was so antisocial that the only people he talked to were me and his friend Nick.

All the while, the mystery woman whom I kept seeing sitting in the lobby of each hotel we were at was really starting to get to me. Was it a drug dealer? A hooker? Both? Even though I was curious, what bothered me about her wasn’t the woman so much as Tony, from time to time, jokingly saying to me, “Hurry up and get out, I’ve got another one waiting downstairs.” Did he think I didn’t notice her? I felt like a fool, and it was really starting to piss me off.

WE GOT AN offer to play the Guitar Greats Show at New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre in November 1984. It was a short jam session with all the top guitarists in the industry: Edward Van Halen, Johnny Winter, and Brian Setzer, just to name a few. It was a night to remember. As always, I was the only female surrounded by male musicians backstage. The pressure was on anyway because of the great guitarists who were on the bill. Johnny Winter was on before us. To follow Johnny Winter—one of my greatest inspirations—was nerve-racking enough. I was supposed to go on separately, without Tony, but it all came to a head an hour prior to us hitting the stage.

“What am I going to play?” said Tony. “How will the drummer sound?”

“Tony, it’s Kenny Aronoff!” I said.

“What? Who’s that?”

Tony was nervous as hell because he wasn’t really one to get onstage with other bands—he wasn’t a jammer. Neither was I, really. By this stage in his life, he had forgotten nearly all his riffs because he was so fucked up all the time. I used to show him how to play his own guitar parts, which I hated doing because he had been my idol. But I knew them like the back of my hand, and he, sadly, did not. I would sit down and play them for him. He would say, “How did you do that?” I would slow it down and show him until he got it. It was the only thing he ever thanked me for during our entire relationship.

As we sat in a corner of the backstage area trying to figure out what Sabbath song he was going to play, I said, “Tony, why don’t you just jam? Just don’t worry. How about I just go onstage with you? I’ll cover you for a song.” He liked the idea, so we decided to go onstage together. It wasn’t what was originally scheduled, but it was a cool idea. The idea of me being onstage with him made him feel better, but what he didn’t know was that I had a plan to outshine him and leave his sorry ass in the dust. I dug deep into my soul and pulled out the times he hit me, the mystery woman in the lobby, and the nights he would stay up with Nick snorting line after line of cocaine until he would hallucinate. That, combined with the constant need to have to prove myself every time I picked up a guitar just because I was female, gave me more than enough motivation to do my best to outplay him onstage that night. I grabbed my pink B.C. Rich Bich, a powerful beast of a guitar, and walked out onstage with Tony. Kenny Aronoff said to me, “What do you want to play, Lita?” Tony was in the corner off to stage right plugging in. I said to Kenny, “How about a bluesy jam in E minor to start?” I had decided to give Tony a taste of his own medicine.

Gently adding in a little bit of “Heaven and Hell” to riff over, it was a ferocious jam. This was my chance. Tony needed a good ass-kicking. He managed to squeeze out a smile for the crowd about halfway through the performance. By the time our set was done, he was sweating bullets, and I knew by the crowd’s reaction that I had more than held my own that night.

After the concert, we headed back to the hotel. Tony was relieved that the show was over. He didn’t say much to me. I think he realized how much he’d fallen with all the drugs he was doing. I thought I’d get the shit beat out of me, but he didn’t fly off the handle that night. Maybe it was done for good?

A few months after the Guitar Greats show, he gave me an engagement ring. It was a gorgeous, big solitaire diamond surrounded with more diamonds. There was no romantic proposal. It was more like Hey, here, I got you a ring. And that was it, we were engaged. But needless to say, I wasn’t so sure about it. I went to visit my parents, and I made up a story about a girl who got hit by her boyfriend. I didn’t tell my mother it was me. I wanted to see what she would say. She told me, “Lita, he do it once, he do it again.” Those words would play over and over again in my mind.

SOON AFTER OUR engagement, I was at the Bellagio hotel in Los Angeles, where Tony and I were staying. He went off on the worst fit of rage I had ever seen. After snorting tons of blow, he got angry and choked me unconscious. When I woke up, I saw him holding a chair above my head. It was a big, heavy leather chair with studs around the arms, and he was about to smash it over my face. I rolled over, and luckily I moved fast enough that he missed me and the chair smashed into the ground.

I ran for the door because I knew he wouldn’t go out into the hallway in his underwear. I got into my car and drove to the closest place I felt safe, which was Nikki’s house. I couldn’t let my parents see me like this. My father would have murdered Tony Iommi. Literally.

I showed up at Nikki’s with some hair ripped out and hand marks around my throat. Nikki said, “What happened to you?” I explained what Tony had done.

“He could have killed me,” I told Nikki. “He hit me in the head and gave me a concussion.”

Nikki said to me, “I’ll be right back; I have something that will help make you feel better.” He got in his Porsche and drove over to his friend Robbin Crosby’s house. He came back with heroin.

“Are you crazy?” I said to him. “I don’t do heroin, Nikki.”

“It will take the pain away.”

And I was in so much pain. My heart ached more than anything. I was willing to try anything. I snorted a little bit of it, because I refused to shoot it after that horrible experience when I shot it with Joey Ramone’s girlfriend.

I curled up on Nikki’s water bed and fell asleep. My head was pounding from the concussion. I could barely move. Nikki let me have his bed that night while he slept on the sofa.

THE NEXT DAY Tony was in rehearsals with his new band, which included members of my own band that he had recruited for himself. Stealing my band was the icing on the cake. He had beaten me, choked me, and now he had taken my rhythm section too: Eric Singer, my drummer, and Gordon Copley, my bass player. What a gentleman. That’s when I was finally done. Of all the drummers I’ve ever played with, and helped in terms of their careers, Eric Singer was my least favorite. If Tony had asked me, I would have gladly handed him over. But to ask him behind my back, that’s a pretty dirty, low-life thing to do when you’re a musician of his stature. He’s Tony Iommi, for fuck’s sake. He could have had any band he wanted. Why steal mine, his fiancée’s? Because it was convenient for him and he only thought of himself. I decided to leave for good. I waited until he was in the studio, then I made my move to leave. I packed up all my stuff and left.

I wrote him a note that read: “You’re not a man. You’re a mouse. Squeak squeak.”

I ended up selling the engagement ring he gave me at a pawn shop for a piddly amount. It had to have cost him thousands, but I got only a couple hundred. I didn’t care. That was what he was worth to me. I guess I held on so long because I had an idea of what he would be like as a person, and I kept hoping that man would come through, but he never did.

After I left Tony, I was heartbroken despite it all. My all-time idol turned out to be an abusive, backstabbing drug addict. He didn’t deserve to be idolized. He was a dirtbag as far as I was concerned. I was so hurt and disappointed that someone I had looked up to could be so horrible. I became angry and self-destructive by doing all the things Tony didn’t want me to do. Tony hated tattoos. They just weren’t proper to him. I rebelled by getting a tattoo on my right shoulder of a dragon wrapped around a guitar. It represented strength in guitar playing. After our breakup, I went on crazy drinking binges because Tony never let me touch a drop, not even on long flights, which was something I always did—a glass of wine relaxed me and helped me sleep. Besides, back then the drinks were free.

To this day I still idolize the original Black Sabbath lead guitarist I saw onstage at the Long Beach Arena when I was thirteen. The one I never met. The Tony Iommi I knew and became engaged to is now gone from my heart. He wasn’t worth the torture. Only the guitar riffs will linger in my memory.

AFTER THE TERRIBLE ending with Tony, seeing Glenn Tipton again was the breath of fresh air I needed. Judas Priest came through Long Beach again in 1984 with their Defenders of the Faith tour, and, as usual, I went to the show. This time Glenn invited me to go with them to their next show in San Diego. He had the following day off and then a show the night after that. I said, “Well, how will I get back home?”

“No worries, my love. We can drop you back at your car when we come back up the coast.”

Awesome!

After the show in Long Beach that night, Glenn cleaned up, took me by the hand, and walked me onto their tour bus. Glenn was such a lovely gentleman and a kind person. We crawled into his bunk and waited for the bus driver and the other band members, then started to make our way down the coast to San Diego. We stayed in his bunk the entire night. It’s one of my favorite places to have sex.

The next day in San Diego we fooled around all day, went to the mall, had some food at a nice restaurant, and then later that night Glenn, Rob, his friend John, and I all went to go see the movie This Is Spinal Tap. Man, we laughed our asses off, especially at the miniature Stonehenge set that Rob Reiner had ripped off from the Black Sabbath shows. Glenn and Rob were waiting nervously to see what “inspiration” Reiner had drawn from Judas Priest. Still today I find myself doing Spinal Tap things backstage. Not being able to find your way around backstage or not knowing where the dressing rooms are is the most common, but then there are other classic moments like the time I was playing a show in LA and drove my 1969 Corvette to the gig. It was a great-looking car, but it didn’t always run great. I had my mother with me, and as we approached the Reseda Country Club, I noticed the line of fans that went around the block. I was trying to look as cool as I could, and some fans noticed me: “Hey, look, it’s Lita Ford!” All of a sudden, my car stalled out. It wouldn’t start. “Lita, what are we going to do?” my mother asked. We were at a standstill in the middle of the street.

“Get out and push, Mom.”

“Lita, I’m not going to push. I’ll go inside and get a roadie.”

My mother came back out with two roadies, and once the fans saw what was going on, a couple of them came over to help as the roadies pushed my car into a parking spot. I don’t think there’s one rock band that doesn’t find themselves having a Spinal Tap moment at some point.

After their San Diego show, the guys from Judas Priest headed back up the coast and drove me to my car in Long Beach. I said my good-byes and couldn’t wait till the next time they came through town.

ALLEN KOVAC MANAGED me for a time during my Dancin’ on the Edge tour. At the time I hired him, Allen was a wannabe rock-star manager trying to “reinvent” me. I think he didn’t believe in me and would have preferred me to be a sweet little pop singer. Everything I tried to do he tried to changed, just like Lance Quinn had done during the recording of the album. He drove me nuts. He kept a suffocatingly close eye on me. I was still in my rebellious phase, and he would slip notes under my hotel room door telling me to “Be a good girl,” “Don’t drink so much,” “Don’t put on so much makeup,” “Get some sleep.” Fuck off!

On one occasion, we were in Lowell, Massachusetts, for a show near where I used to live as a kid and where my aunt Livia still was. She was my mother’s youngest sister and one of my favorite relatives. We had a day off and I wanted to go visit my aunt, who had just been through a difficult divorce. She was going to cook a feast for my entire band and crew; my cousins were going to come by. But Kovac had a hair up his ass because he thought I was going out to score drugs. He was wrong. Way wrong. Kovac had told my tour manager, who then ordered the bus driver not to take us anywhere that day. I ended up taking a cab by myself. I fired Kovac soon after that. He pissed me off one too many times, but this time he fucked with my family. My aunt went out to get steak and chicken and all the fixings, and all the work she had done went to waste because I was the only one who showed up for the wonderful meal she had prepared. Soon after that she was diagnosed with and forced to battle lung cancer. She was very special to me. I’ll never forgive Kovac for killing that visit.

GLENN AND JUDAS PRIEST came to town again about a year after I had seen him last, and we picked up right where we left off. I invited him over to my parents’ house after the show. He had one of Priest’s truck drivers bring him over in a black semitruck. That’s the kind of down-to-earth guy Glenn is, to visit me at my mother and father’s house after a show.

We sat up all night in the back house exchanging guitar licks, talking about instruments, and doing what little blow we had. My mother had to be at work by four A.M., so she came into the back house at around 3:30 A.M. to say hello to Glenn. Glenn had heard so much about her and had been looking forward to meeting her. My mother loved Glenn too.

We got talking about guitar picks, and he asked me what kind of pick I used. I handed him my odd home-plate-shaped pick, and he showed me his medium, regular-shaped pick. I told him he shouldn’t be using those picks because they weren’t thick enough, and that he should use something thicker for more attack on the strings. He looked at me as if to say, Really? You are telling me what kind of pick to use? We both laughed.

Glenn’s driver slept in the truck while we stayed up all night. Until next year, Glenn. Ta-ta.