For What It's Worth (A True Story, Most Of It, I Think)
Shortly after my father’s death in 1989, I was happy to leave The States and return to my army unit in Germany since that’s where my guitar was. It was around this time the kindling of a rock band began to smolder after my brother-from-another-mother and I discovered a large, unused room in the attic in the furthest reaches of the barracks. (Actually, I’d already known about it since my girlfriend and I usually held our trysts there, but the prospect of rock stardom outweighed privacy concerns and so I led my friend there to ‘discover’ the room together.) That brother-from-another-mother, Rick (R.I.P.), also played guitar and our ‘styles’ (read: schlocking) meshed well since we grew up on similar rock music. And so, for a while it was just myself and Rick. At some point we’d heard the tall guy in 3 rd platoon, Fred, was a dedicated Rush fan and played drums. Despite the fact our abilities were clearly beneath Fred after we heard him play, we convinced him to join our ensemble without ...