Mom, Have You Seen My Leather Pants? The Tale of a Teen Rock Wannabe Who Almost Was

1 Little Dreamer Rock superstardom begins as a fantasy. The human mind is such that we all believe we are greatness waiting to be realized. For most of us, rock stardom is just a passing daydream while in the car, alone, with our favorite song on the radio. Once the song is over, or we arrive at our destination, we are the realtor, computer technician, or coffee shop attendant others see us as . . . with a secret ambition. In our fantasies as wannabe rock stars, we are able to do things other people cannot. Play guitar like Eddie Van Halen. Bang out the drum intro from "Hot For Teacher." Do one of those karate kicks like David Lee Roth in the "Jump" video. This is escapism. This is catharsis. This is healthy. This keeps the horrible quotidian state of our existences from suffocating us. When we get too caught up in the fantasy, however, it mutates into something pathological. In mild cases, this disease can lead to poor fashion choices, bizarre mating habits, and a twisted sense of the word grooming. Unfortunately, the majority of rock star cases are severe, the result of self-destructive mindsets, two of which are put forth by Hair Metal philosophers Def Leppard at the beginning of 1983's "Rock of Ages": "It's better to burn out, than fade away" and the seemingly nonsensical "Unta gleeben glauten gloven." While to the average listener the latter phrase may appear encrypted, to a recovering rock star, it is perfectly intelligible. "Don't try to become a rock god," Joe Elliot, lead singer of the Def, seems to have been saying in his made-up hobbit language, "or you might sever an arm in a car accident, as our drummer is going to do about a year from now, or drink yourself to death, as our guitarist is going to do in 1991." Because what Mr. Elliot knows, as do all rock stars in convalescence, is that once the disease takes hold, it rarely ends well. Researchers agree that the transformation of this healthy fantasy to unwholesome lifestyle is idiopathic. Certainly, a mixture of karaoke and alcohol may trigger brief fits, as can awards shows (it's fun to imagine whom we might thank) and showers (something to do with acoustics; as any rock star can tell you, reverb is everything). Yet for long-term sufferers, the causes are much more mysterious, making prevention nearly impossible. Those who are concerned that a loved one may be infected might look for the following symptoms: Adding unnecessary syllables to monosyllabic words While this is common practice throughout the rock star world, there is no better case study on this matter than W. Axl Rose. Compare Bob Dylan's version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" to that of Guns N' Roses, in which Axl saddles the word door with surplus syllables. The word mine, as in "Sweet Child O'" contains anywhere from two to five syllables. And then there is the megasyllabic ending to "Don't Cry," which lasts a sickly twenty-five seconds. Axl is almost certainly the greatest rock star to come out of the Hair Metal era, and yet today he only occasionally leaves his home to rerecord the same album he's been working on for a dozen years and beat up fashion designers. Had his illness been detected early, he might still be a productive member of society. The urge to dress like a cowboy, despite the fact that you don't ride a horse or work with cattle Clearly, no one suffers this symptom more than Jon Bon Jovi, as evidenced by "Wanted: Dead or Alive," a song in which he describes riding steel horses and carrying loaded six strings. People are quick to forget JBJ's solo career, however, during which he made a whole cowboy album (Blaze of Glory) for the 1994 cowboy movie Young Guns II. He even brought his Jersey cowboy image to his acting debut in that film as "Pit Inmate Shot Back Into Pit." I saw tWilliams, Craig A. is the author of 'Mom, Have You Seen My Leather Pants? The Tale of a Teen Rock Wannabe Who Almost Was', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307342126 and ISBN 0307342123.