Sometimes I write letters to NME, it's therapeutic. Hope they keep publishing the mag forever. Here's one letter:

Dear NME,

            I was born on Feb. 29^th, 1964, in Wisconsin. The number one song in a America was “I wanna hold your hand.” An apt tune, considering I would spend much of my life chasing girls, getting them, losing them, recovering from all that, then doing it all over again.  I was sent to the principal’s office for looking up the teacher’s dress in Kindergarten. I remember it well, we were all sitting down, in a semi-circle, around the teacher, and she was reading to us or telling a story, something, who listens? I was kind of rocking back and forth, in a semi-lotus position and each time I would sort of tilt my head a little more as I got closer. I’m sure it was obvious, but I thought I was being stealthy. Then, success, I got a glimpse! And a stern hand on my collar, yanking me to my feet for a forced march to the office. All for some granny panties forced over some nylons. It was worth it.

            That was in Indiana, where I lived from the age of two through twenty-one. My first year was spent in Pennsylvania, the time there notable only for the fact that I ran away from home, disappearing into the woods, to the horror of my parents, who found me hours later, two subdivisions over. Over the years I’ve filled in the details of this journey with my imagination so many times that it feels like a memory instead of an old family story. I spent my second birthday there, or non-birthday. I imagine my mom pushing me around in a stroller, with the Temptation’s “My girl” (which was number one that February of 1965) playing on the radio whileshe sang along. She sang to me a lot, she says, The Beatles, the Stones, anything with a nice melody.

            From there our family (which now included my brother Dave) moved to Indiana. At first we stayed at the Travelodge, a little motel near the Wabash river, a block from the future site of the Levee Plaza Skateboard Park, where I would meet Bill Bailey and Jeff Isbell, as well as many other people who never became famous,  and probably never wanted to. The Travelodge, where I would lose my virginity years later, and where I would take the occasional girl even more years later, picking them up at the shitty college bar that was erected on the site where the skatepark had been.

            We were staying at this little motel because my dad had taken a job at Purdue University, as a professor in the Industrial and Physical Pharmacy dept. Put simply, in his words, he taught people how to better deliver drugs to the body. Hey dad, how about a syringe? All my friends will really like them years from now.

            My mom was a housewife, for the first ten years of my life, anyway, then she went back to work as a pharmacist. There was a little shopping center at the edge of campus, maybe a mile or two from where we lived. I tend to think of suburbs as those vast, cookie cutter developments like you see in ET. We lived in the country, down a little lane that ran off the main road, which itself had branched off of the county highway that had a long time ago stretched all the way up to Chicago. It was still the suburbs.

            The Purdue Service Center, where Goodnight’s Pharmacy was, was also home to a supermarket, a laundromat/pinball arcade, a Burger Chef, and LMG Records. LMG, which stood for Lick My Grooves, was where I first heard Can, among many other oddities.

            Once my mom went back to work, my brother and I were on our own. We hadn’t been allowed to cross the main road before this; now were allowed to ride our bikes all the way into town, opening up whole new worlds to pollute with our evil imaginations.

            You might as well call me Epistle Larry, because I’ve decided to tell my life story, in letter form. Letters to you, NME! Someday I’ll collect all the letters in a book and call it, “I used to rollerskate with Axl.” Scratch that, you can still call me Danny Sirens.

                                   

                                    Danny Sirens, Faraway Sirens, San Francisco

P.S. Here’s a link to a song by my first band. We formed in 1979 or so, and only ever put two songs out.

The Levee Plaza Skateboard Park

When I was a kid my brother was a champion swimmer. Our family spent every weekend at swim meets, all over Indiana. My dad would give me a few bucks for candy and I’d be off, exploring, stealing stuff, the usual. To compensate, my dad would usually back me when I wanted to try new stuff. Tae Kwan Do, wrestling, etc. One day we were driving through Levee Plaza in West Lafayette, down by the river. I was looking out the window, idly watching some workers pouring cement at a construction site. Daydreaming about something else, I slowly realized I was watching a skatepark being constructed. I knew what they looked like because I’d been perusing Skateboarder Magazine in the grocery store for years. I planned to be there opening day.

      This time my dad said no, afraid I’d break an arm or something. Concrete was less forgiving than a wrestling mat.  I begged. I cajoled. “I wish you’d never adopted me.” “You love Doug more than me.” “If you say no, this is the first step on the road to me sucking stranger’s dicks for money and living under a bridge.” Maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. Eventually, with a little help from my mom, he caved.

      That was it, grades dropped, interest in anything else waned, at least until punk rock came along. I went the park every day after school, all day on the weekends. I met kids from other area schools, formed a punk band, the whole bit. One day I asked this red haired kid if I could borrow his wrench, so I could tighten my trucks. “Don’t lose it, my dad will kill me,” he said as  he handed me the wrench. Later, he would become Axl Rose, but back then everyone called him by his last name, Bailey.