My parents were totally supportive of everything my sister and I did. If they saw that we had an interest in something, whether it was tap dancing or playing accordion, piano, drums, or guitar, they found a way to nurture it. We were a middle-class family and my dad worked very hard. My mom sometimes worked too. She’d clean houses part-time for a few families and she’s very embarrassed to admit it (sorry, Mom).

My dad was the shop superintendent for the L.A. County Road Department. He ran the division that maintained all those big crazy tractors and dump trucks that repair the roads. My dad was amazing; he could fix anything. In the army he had been a staff sergeant in the motor pool and was trained as a diesel mechanic. My dad was so mechanical that we never needed a repairman in our house. When the washing machine broke, my dad took it apart, spread the pieces across the floor of the garage, fixed the broken part, and put it back together. You’d turn the switch and there you go—it worked again.

My parents knew early on that only a few things mattered to me and the first in line was music. They supported my interest but they were strict about it too: They wouldn’t let me get out of practicing whatever instrument I wanted to learn. Piano was the worst. I was like, “Fuck, man” because I had to practice all these scales and be tested each week at my lesson. It got pretty boring, pretty quick, let me tell you. I wanted to fucking rock. I’d be plunking along, thinking, “This blows.” I wanted to play songs, and although I did soon enough, I found out that piano wasn’t going to get that much more rocking. Sure, I learned “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but I wanted to play “Stairway to Heaven.” Now, of course, I’ve learned to appreciate the piano for the beautiful instrument that it is, but back then it seemed to me that unless you were Jerry Lee Lewis, a piano wasn’t going to rock shit as hard as a guitar or a drum set.

Growing up, my sister and I did everything together, even tap dancing and ballet lessons, which was fucking bizarre. I hung with dance as long as I could because I liked dancing with the girls, but ballet ended all that. Aside from dancing with the chicks, everything else about it was wack and it freaked me out way too much to really go for it. Tap dancing was cool because it was rhythmic, something I took with me when I started drumming and that I’ll always have. Nothing changed much in high school—I just wasn’t one of those guys who was all about football or hanging out with the guys. I played baseball a little bit; I did the Little League thing for a minute. I was really more about coed volleyball and

spiking was my forte.

It’s pretty simple: I always felt more comfortable around girls. I was friends with girls who were juniors and seniors when I was a freshman. They’d pick me up in their cars in the morning and drive me to school. It ruled. I was a fucking freshman, dude, riding in the backseat, cranking the Rolling Stones on the way to school.

From the start, I really wasn’t interested in academics. History, in particular, bored the fuck out of me. I was like, “Wait a minute, who cares? I wasn’t here when this happened anyway.” I didn’t care who the first president of the United States was. I mean, I know the answer—it was George Washington—but what does that matter to me? Nothing is going to change about history, and that’s the truth. If I can’t do anything about it, I don’t see much point in being interested in it.

History was like a root canal without novocaine, but math was cool. I liked figuring out problems, so math interested me until it became too complicated. When I started doing algebra and trigonometry, I was like, “Whoa, hey, whoa. Wait a minute. Take it easss.”

I felt pretty lost in high school until later on when I got into the arts. Art class was great because I could make silk screens and soon enough the only thing I wanted to do was stay late to print rock-and-roll T-shirts. I made fucking Van Halen and Zeppelin shirts, and I spent a lot of my extra time drawing. It wasn’t long before I skipped or lied my way out of every class except art and music. My music teacher, Mr. Dvorak, was the only guy I looked forward to seeing every day. My favorite thing to do was to go play drums and he’d let me. I don’t remember having Mr. Dvorak actually teach me how to wail, but he did recognize how much I loved it and he let me go off. During the writing of this book, I went back to my old high school to see if Mr. Dvorak was there and I’m happy to say that he was.

As I drove up to the school that day, I wondered why everyone seemed so much smaller than what I remember them being when I was in high school, but then I realized that my old high school was now a junior high. I walked on the grounds and looked at the field where I used to run laps during PE and practice with the drum corps of the marching band. I looked at the parking lot where I used to roll up in my fucked-up blue Chevy van. The windshield wiper squirters on that thing were loose, so I turned them to the sides so that I could squirt people as I drove by. I’d come through, hit the button, bzzzup, and people would be like, “Dude!” After a while I drained all the water out and filled the reservoir with Jack Daniel’s. When I pulled into the parking lot, my buddies who knew would be like, “Hit the switch, dude.” They’d put their mouth over the sprayer and drink Jack windshield.

I walked around my old school, remembering where shop and music and gym were. There were kids running around everywhere, and I felt like I was doing something wrong and that at any minute I would get in trouble. I wasn’t sure if I actually was doing something wrong by visiting my school or if I just remembered how many things I’d done wrong when I actually went there and felt bad about them. Whatever. I kept watching all the little guys run around, wanting to be them instead of the guy who is completely tattooed and who looks like he’s gonna hurt some children.

The only thing that mattered to me when I was in that place was music; I didn’t care about anything else or anything that anybody ever told me. When I got a piece of music to learn, I did that and no other homework really mattered. When I saw a girl with a flute, I said hello and asked where the office was—that’s when I found out Mr. Dvorak was still working there. Mr. Dvorak used to throw erasers at me. He’d get mad because I’d always be doing rolls on the drums. He’d take the eraser off the chalkboard, toss it, and say, “Stop on the drums!” He wasn’t really mad though. He knew how much I loved playing and let me hang out in the music room, practicing as much as I wanted to.

Mr. Dvorak was preparing his last spring concert in the gym. After teaching for forty years, he was going to retire. I’m so glad I didn’t put off going back to my school—if I had I would have missed him. When I found him, Mr. Dvorak came over and gave me a huge hug. My eyes filled up and so did his—he was more than just a teacher to me. We talked for a while and here’s how our conversation went.

Mr. Dvorak was the only one who thought I’d do something with music. And he had an idea even then that it would be something big. Thanks, Mr. Dvorak. I was a skinny kid in school, and I got fucked with by a lot of the bigger dudes. This one time at band camp, I mean in music class, the drum captain of the marching band achieved a new low. I was in the drum corps of the marching band, and each week, as part of our practice, all of us drummers tested and competed to determine our rank. There were skills you had to have: stick twirling (that came in handy later), the rudiments that strengthened your hands, the marching formations, and your overall showmanship. Each week, a drum corps member could rise or fall in the rank and it meant a lot to all of us. That captain guy was also a senior who was jealous and pretty fuckin’ unhappy watching me, this freshman, rise through the ranks week after week. It was pretty clear to both of us that his job was on the line. So one day, after practice, he came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and as I turned around, he sucker-punched me and relocated my nose to the other side of my face. What up, Mr. Drum Captain? How’s your drumming going, bro? Played any arenas lately?

Other dudes took a different approach. I got snapped in the shower with towels during gym class and some fuckers picked on me whenever they saw me in the halls. It was the typical bullshit: I’d be standing there in line at PE, freezing cold (it does actually get cold in California, people), and some fucking bully motherfucker would roll by and flick me in the ear. There was nothing I could do about it, because the guy would be there, looking at me, waiting for me to do something and give him a reason to shit down my neck. At those moments, I’d do the only thing I could do. I’d sit there, acting like I didn’t care and thinking to myself, “You Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

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fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck, you know what? One day motherfucker, one day you’re going to be fuckin’ coming to see me fuckin’ play. And you’re gonna want tickets and you’re gonna wanna be backstage acting like you know me and shit, and know what? Sit your ass down in a lawn chair in the parking lot, bitch. You’ll get nothin’ and like it. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And if you’ve got any friends, fuck them too.” You don’t have to believe me, but back then I knew that one day I was going to do something really big. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew what was coming would be something else. If I had to compare my attitude to anyone back then it would be to Spanky in Our Gang in that awesome episode about the go-cart race.* There he is, blazing down a hill in his little wooden car and one of the other kids asks him, “Spanky, where are you going?” He doesn’t take his eye off the road for a minute and says, “I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I know I’m gonna get there.” I had the same blind faith, and it was the only thing that kept me from going Richter every day at school when people picked on me. Fucking jerk-offs.

By the time I was a sophomore I was in a band. We didn’t even have a name because we didn’t play anywhere, but we fucking ripped. Here’s the lineup: Tom Galardo, this Mexican guy, who was the shreddingest guitar player anywhere local, this guy John Kemp on bass, and me on drums. We were all business—an instrumental power trio who didn’t care about lyrics, singing, or anything but jamming. I am not at all lying, exaggerating, or coloring the past when I say that we fucking crushed. At least I thought so, and it seemed like other people did too at the backyard kegger parties we played. We also rehearsed regularly in my parents’ garage, where anyone could catch us daily for no cover charge. When I turned that corner and headed full-on toward a rock-and-roll life, my dad definitely tripped out. He had been in the army, and it was obvious to everyone that it wasn’t easy for him to look at his son’s long hair. To his credit, he never really said shit about the hair—it was my earrings that freaked him out. By the time I was sixteen, I had pierced both ears and usually wore a long feather in one of them. One night, our family was at the dinner table chowing down and my dad stopped everything dead. He was like, “Is that an earring, Tom?” I usually tried to cover the feather with my hair when he was around but that time he saw that shit sticking out. He wasn’t a yeller; my dad said what he needed to say with his looks. He sat there, pretty calm, his expression transmitting his message: “What the fuck is that?” I was like, “Dad, check it out, it’s rad. Do you see this little feather hanging down?” Since he had been a diesel mechanic and a full-on army guy, he was probably thinking, “Great, my son’s a fag.” But he let me do my thang. Thanks, Dad.

At seventeen I got my first tattoo: Mighty Mouse flying through a bass drum at the top of my right shoulder, where it still is today. That was the clincher because by then my parents knew I was just going to go and do whatever I wanted. He might not have liked the direction I was heading, but my dad was so fucking rad. He did everything in his power to help me, including giving up his work space to fucking build me my first studio. We didn’t have a big house—we had a two-car garage and pretty much the average middle-class suburban American layout. He started parking the cars in the driveway so that our garage could be my practice room. He soundproofed it and built a door so that my band and I could do our thing. It had everything you need in a garage studio: insulation, drywall, and a pressed-board door. It was the ultimate sacrifice for an engineer to give up the only place in the house where he could build shit. He just did it and didn’t say much about it. He just told me, “Tommy, go nuts, play all day if you want. Just stop by ten o’clock.”

When I started playing out with my first band my dad built us pyrotechnics. He had a little switchbox, four flashpots, metal pipe, and a piece of wood with spikes coming through the bottom, all tied together with guitar string. There was a little filament in the bottom of each flashpot, into which he poured gunpowder and then hit the switch. Boom! The neighbors must have thought he was fucking mad. He made us a lighting system too. It was made of cardboard and wood, and it was real Neanderthal—it only had an on/off switch, but it was something that the other high school bands did not have.

I can’t say it enough: For a former army mechanic to give up his garage and tool area to build his hyperactive, hooky playin’, maybe gay, wannabe rock star son a studio—that is a cool parent. If I can just be half the man my dad was I’ll be all right. I’ve always realized the example he set, but after he died, like everyone else who loses someone, I started to see it more clearly. My dad was the silent type, but he sent me the right messages. As my life got crazy and as I got involved with the opposite sex, he was probably relieved yet also concerned that I’d get someone pregnant. Back when I was growing up, getting a girl pregnant was all you had to worry about. In the eighties everyone dropped their clothes and had sex when they wanted, how they wanted, where they wanted. No one thought about condoms, and no one was worried about diseases, though we should have been. It was about one thing: as much play as you could get. That’s when Dad and I had “the Talk.”

He told me to be careful in such a beautiful way that I’m not sure anyone else but those of us who knew him can truly appreciate it. He said “Be careful, son. Be careful where you dip your wick. Your thing there, it’s like a candle. And you can get burned.”

At my craziest moments, though, I’ve wondered how I could have grown up in my parents’ wonderful, grounded household and become such a maniac. I always conclude that I’m still around, and that I’m happy and am what I consider to be some sort of a decent person simply because of them.

Now that I have two children of my own, I’ve tried to follow my parents’ example as much as I can. I don’t think parents should make rules; I think they should act as they wish their kids to be, as much as they possibly can. All parents want their children’s lives to be perfect, and in this world that’s a tall order no matter who you are or how much money, freedom, or foresight you have. Do your best and remember that you are the living lesson they are learning from each and every day.

I’m lucky. It was so rad to grow up watching my mom and dad because they were so in love with each other for their entire lives. I’d watch my dad pinch my mom’s ass and blow her kisses across the room, or get up suddenly just to go over and give her a hug. Only one time during my childhood did I ever see my parents fight. Just once, and it was over money. (Hell, money will make anyone fight.) Times were tight and my mom thought my dad wasn’t being straight with her about what he was earning. She thought he was spending his cash somewhere else instead of bringing it home for the family. When she confronted him, my dad pulled his wallet out, threw it at her, and told her to look in it and see how much money he had. He told her to take everything in there. I’ll never forget it.

My parents were so in love and that’s what I learned. They had the kind of love that makes life worth living. I saw what a relationship between a man and woman could be and should be. It is what I’ve always compared my relationships to and I thank them for that. It is a lesson they never could have told me, but one they could have only showed me. And they did.