Read an Excerpt
December 27, 1989
Springfield, MA
I touch my fingers to my lips. I stand. Bathed in sweat. In the center of the stage. The taste is salty to my tongue. I look at the ground.
I see a glass bottle under my gaze. Lying askew atop the metal grid. I feel the red liquid all over my hand. I touch the crimson substance to my mouth.
Why is there red liquid all over me?
I wipe my brow. I discover that my face is completely covered in what I am assuming is tomato juice.
Why would somebody throw a glass bottle of tomato juice at me while I'm on stage?
To my shock, horror, and amazement, my face is not covered in tomato juice. My face is completely covered in my own blood. In front of 20,000 people. Opening up for my heroes, Aerosmith.
I am standing on stage in front of a packed arena with my face and hands covered in my own blood.
I see red. Not from the blood in my eyes, but from the anger in my heart.
General admission crowds are by nature, crazy.
When there are no chairs at a concert, and thousands of people crush together in one sweaty, rocking crowd, things can get out of control all too easily. I look into the seething mass of highly charged rock 'n' rollers on the arena floor in front of me. I start to utter the infamous rap, as viewed millions of times now on YouTube.
“Who in the fuck threw that?”
About ten guys circle around one guy. They're all pointing at him. They're all shouting at me.
“It was him, it was him!”
“Was it you, cocksucker?”
The man in the middle of the other ten says nothing. He looks straight at me, and extends his middle finger, in the gesture commonly known as “Fuck You.”
What happens next is the first chink in the armor. Of Skid Row. Of stardom. This is the exact moment when my childhood dream shows that first sign of an adult nightmare.
I had spent at least seven or eight years previous to this moment playing in clubs. Bars. Saloons. Playing three sets a night. Cover tunes. To drunk rock 'n' rollers in Quebec and Northern Ontario. Fighting was just a part of the scene and I had been in for years now. I did not know any other way to respond.
But this was not a club.
This was a packed arena. Full of approximately 20,000 people. Not a place where I could act in the only way I had known how to act previously. My life had changed. But I was not mature enough at the time to realize that I had to change with it.
I say into the mic, “Everybody, get the fuck back.:
I motion with my hands for everybody to move out of the way of this guy. Whose ass, I most certainly intended to kick.
I pick the glass bottle up off the stage. I walk as far back to the drum riser as I can, to get a good run at my nemesis. The song we are about to play is called “Piece of Me.” Never could I have realized that the song would be taken so literally. By a deranged fan. By me. By Myself.
I star into the man's face as he tells me again to fuck off. I am completely enraged and am not about to let him win this fight.
I then do the unthinkable.
