When I was about 21 and just about to get out of college at NYU, Vietnam was raging, and I was a frustrated musician for a little bit.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring.
I was crazy for music as a high school kid and a college kid.
I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.
In a way, I'm lucky that I was never classically trained and never went to a music college. I'm just from a normal working class family and happened to get obsessed with music as a teenager.
As a halfway decent college DJ, I had been exposed to some great progressive stuff and always took pride in unearthing musical gems.
I pretty much spent my twenties as a musician and taking acting classes. I loved it. I was at UCLA getting As and Bs in English and creative writing, basically trying to stay out of the Army. All I really wanted to do was play music.
School was pretty good about letting me take up music and that's where I had my first musical ideas and first said, 'Yeah, I'm going to be a musician.' I just had to do a quick stop gap in the army first.
I came to L.A. in 1970, and my desire and my training was to be a studio musician, which I had read about in my senior year in high school.
I moved out to L.A. when I was 17, dropped out of high school, and pursued a career in music.
It wasn't until I was about 17 or 18 years old that I got into music.