is the living, fire-breathing embodiment of the American Dream: the immigrant who found fame and fortune, in his case as co-leader of rock superstars . But when he talks about the music he loves, he is very much the Anglophile. “For me, England is holy ground,” he says.
“ changed life on Earth! And then you had the Stones, , and so on.” He feels that the cultural exchange between the US and the UK was uneven. “You guys gave us , and we gave you the Grateful fucking Dead!” But there is some American music he holds dear.
Surprisingly, the God Of Thunder is also a soul boy at heart. It was black music. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, James Brown, Ray Charles - all the greats.
When I moved to America with my mother, I was eight and I couldn’t speak a word of English. So I didn’t understand the words in songs like : ‘ ’ – you know, she likes to fuck! I didn’t know that the term ‘rock’n’roll’ meant sex. I was just moved by this music, even though I didn’t know how to dance.
When I was thirteen I had a school buddy, Seth Dogramajian, who played guitar and we’d sing harmony like the Everly Brothers. We called ourselves the Missing Links. Our first performance was at Joseph Pulitzer Junior High School in Jackson Heights, Queens, and I think the first song was a Beatles song, .
It’s either Lennon or McCartney. Because for every , every , you had , which is haunting like no other song I’ve ever heard. Even a song that Lennon wasn’t fond of, , nobod.