Free Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley Page A

at the time. They had a home tape recording machine as opposed to something fancier that might be used in a studio, but we worked all day. Toward the end of the night, Brooke and I smoked some weed using a big fish-shaped bong. I was absolutely out of my head, and with the workday done, we listened to Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull until it occurred to me that I didn’t know where I was sleeping that night.
    “Come on into the bedroom,” Brooke said to me.
    Uh-oh .
    That was one of the longest walks I’d ever taken. I wasn’t sure what to do. But when he opened the door, I saw two beds in the room. Phew! Thank you, Lord .
    Working with Gene like that, I could see that we had some things in common. His family were Holocaust survivors. He was smart and serious. Even though he and Brooke were working in New Jersey, Gene turned out to live only about fifteen minutes away from me in Queens. It also turned out that he’d had a band upstate during college, and they had played live quite a lot. He had a lot to offer. He could sing well and play bass well. He could write songs. Perhaps most importantly, Gene was focused.
    One thing I had figured out by then was that talent, like everything else, was just a starting point. What counted was what you did with it. I knew I wasn’t the most talented guitar player or the best singer or the best writer, but I could do all of those things, and I had a complete vision of what it was going to take to succeed—a vision that included working, working, working.
    Gene wrote a lot of very odd songs. Maybe it was because he was originally from another country? I wasn’t sure. He had one called “Stanley the Parrot” and another called “My Uncle Is a Raft.” He even had one called “My Mother is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.”
    Um, okay, that’s a bit weird .
    Still, the more we played together, the better it got. Gene and I liked the same kind of music, and we could sing harmonies well together. I decided I wanted to work with him. I could see a bigger picture now, and despite his idiosyncrasies—as an only child, teamwork was not Gene’s strong suit—we both were intelligent enough to know how to harness ambition. And after all, it would be a lot easier to slay the dragon with a second person to help.
    As we continued to rehearse together, Steve Coronel ended up joining us, too, and we slowly started to become something more and more like an actual band.

10.
    I n June 1970 I graduated from the High School of Music & Art, finishing just a few dozen people from the bottom of a very sizable class. I was, in fact, amazed that I had graduated at all, given how little I showed up to class.
    Graduating was a mixed blessing. I was glad to have school behind me, but I was scared shitless about being drafted. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and the last thing I wanted was to be drafted. I didn’t need to go to Vietnam any more than I needed to take acid.
    During years of building fear, I had managed to accumulate some medical documentation of various problems—like back pain and other things I’d seen a doctor about. One day I went down to Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan with my draft card for induction. They reviewed my records and quickly dismissed me. All my fears, the years I spent anguishing over being sent to Vietnam, had been for nothing. I told my parents the great news, how I had taken all my medical records to prove I wasn’t fit for service. They looked at each other quizzically and said, “Didn’t you know you can’t be drafted?”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “You’re deaf in one ear.”
    Aha .
    Shocked, I thought of all the times I had brought up the subject of the draft during high school. Every male approaching draft age was concerned with what was to come. I had made my fears clear to my parents on many occasions. That was one fear they could have laid to rest for me if they had ever told me I was ineligible for the draft.
    “Why didn’t you ever tell