100% OFFICIAL

JUSTIN BIEBER
First Step 2 Forever: My Story

CONTENTS

Cover Page

Title Page

A Special DM to the Greatest Fans in the World!

1 Let’s Get This Show on the Road

2 A Secret Musician

3 The Stratford Star

4 YouTube: My First Million

5 The Start of a New Life

6 Welcome to My World

7 Just the Beginning

Thank You

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

A SPECIAL DM TO THE GREATEST FANS IN THE WORLD!

How can I begin to thank you for making this journey possible? Every one of you is “My Favorite Girl” for a different reason, because each of you is special in your own way. Everywhere I go, whatever I do, I try to connect with as many of you as possible. If you’re up front at a concert, I might reach out and hold your hand. If you show up outside the arena after the show, you might get soaked in one of our epic water fights. You might just be talking to your friends on Twitter saying you have a one-in-a-million chance of reaching me and now I’m following you. My dreams used to be a one-in-a-million chance as well, but as I said in the song, never say never. I never forget that none of this would have happened without you. That’s why I want to share this story with you: so you can experience the journey with me, all the highs and lows, the laughter and the tears. You were there from the beginning. Now, as you see what I saw and feel what I felt, I hope you’ll believe that big dreams really can come true. I’m living mine every day. Thanks to you.

LUV YAH, JUSTIN

CHAPTER 1
LET’S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2010
9:45 A.M.

Rolling into the XL Center, I feel like I ought to have skates on my feet.

“Hey!” I elbow my grandpa in the ribs. “Can’t you just smell the hockey?”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah.”

In less than forty hours, the XL Center will be jammed to the rafters with almost twenty thousand screaming fans, but right now the venue is just begging for a Zamboni.

A Zamboni is that huge tank-like thing they drive around to even out the ice during halftime at a hockey game. It melts the top layer, which almost immediately refreezes as smooth as glass. But I can’t believe I have to describe what a Zamboni is. It’s like describing something you’ve known since the day you were born.

“A lot can change in three years... it’s unreal”

Being a Canadian, hockey is our thing. We have it in our blood.

Sometimes they let a celebrity guest a war hero, beauty-pageant winner, local news anchor, or whatever – ride in the Zamboni. And, until three years ago, that was my definition of celebrity: somebody who gets to ride around in the Zamboni. My definition of a rock star was somebody who gets to ride around in a tour bus.

A lot can change in three years.

When I was twelve, my manager, Scott “Scooter” Braun, saw a YouTube video of me performing in a local talent show. When I was fourteen, we joined forces with the recording artist Usher, who was not only one of my heroes but helped introduce me to the world. A few months after my fifteenth birthday, my first single dropped. Now I’m sixteen and about to launch my first tour as a headliner.

IT’S UNREAL.

The My World Tour will hit eighty-five cities in the US and Canada – connecting with almost two million fans – all in less than six months. My backup singers, Legaci, my dancers, band and a huge crew are all on the ride with me. It takes eight buses and a whole fleet of eighteen-wheelers to move all the people and equipment.

WOW!

“The My World Tour will hit eighty-five cities – connecting with almost two million fans – all in less than six months”

I make my way across the bus garage with my grandparents, Bruce and Diane Dale, and Kenny Hamilton, personal security ninja and frequent victim of my Xbox 360 powers of annihilation. My mom, Pattie Mallette, teeters along behind us, rocking skinny jeans and high heels. Mom is a trip and she sacrificed everything for me.

Scooter has already been at the venue for hours, shooting hoops with the roadies and backup dancers between frantic cellphone calls. Scooter’s the mastermind behind the operation and he and the team wrestle all the details into place: media stuff, like interviews and photo requests; logistical stuff, like who’s going where in which bus; and of course crucial life-dependent matters, like making sure I don’t eat any pizza the day of the show (singers aren’t supposed to have dairy before a show, but we all know I’m a rule breaker. Pizza is just so good!). Scooter’s always strategizing – he treats life like chess, always eight moves ahead. The dude’s a beast.

With a quick fist bump “wassup” to Kenny and hugs for me and Mom, he leads us through the backstage catacombs to the arena where the tour riggers are craning in a huge steel-framed hot air balloon basket.

“Nice.” Kenny and I nod our approval.

This thing is designed to fly me out over the crowd during the song “Up,” starting upstage about thirty feet in the air, then floating out over their heads, gliding on waves of energy and noise, dipping not quite low enough for them to touch, but close enough for me to see all those beautiful faces. I really hope my fans are gonna go crazy when they see it. But then the gondola makes a noise like a Chevy grinding through a guardrail. It lurches to a halt. Jerks to the left. Wobbles to the right.

I’m like, “Whoa, dude! That’s not supposed to happen.”

High in the catwalks, the fly riggers debate back and forth on their walkie-talkies in hushed voices. Not cool. But, just when I start to experience some talkback from the big breakfast in my stomach, I feel a reassuring arm around my shoulders. Scooter’s girlfriend, Carin, is standing beside me. Carin is helping out on tour – but really she is here to help me and Scooter navigate this crazy time in our lives. She’s a major part of our support system, and always has my well-being at the front of her mind.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’ll be cool. Safety comes way before special effects. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know,” I tell her. “But I don’t want to have to cut any of the tricks. The show is so awesome. I just want it to go perfect.”

“It will,” says Mom. “It’s going to be amazing.”

“Totally amazing,” Carin agrees. “Look. I think they’ve got it.”

The steel gondola recovers its balance, soaring smoothly again, along with music from the soundboard.

It’s a big, big world. It’s easy to get lost in it...

I love that line in the lyrics. Sometimes I feel like that’s what everyone’s expecting. My world got very big, very fast, and based on a lot of sad examples from the past, a lot of people expect me to get lost in it. I’m always getting asked the same two questions: “How did you get started?” and “How do you stay grounded?”

Standing there in the XL Center, I can see the answers to both: I’m surrounded by super-smart, super-talented, extremely good people who love me and watch out for me every step of the way. They don’t let me lose sight of where I came from or where I’m going. And they don’t let me get away with any crap. The success I’ve achieved comes to me from God, through the people who love and support me, and I include my fans in that. Every single one of you lifts me a little bit higher.

“The success I’ve achieved comes to me from God...”

“My world got very big, very fast, and based on a lot of sad examples from the past, a lot of people expect me to get lost in it”

... nowhere but up from here, my dear...

Baby we can go nowhere but up. Tell me what we got to fear. We can take it to the sky past the moon through the galaxy. As long as you’re with me.

What a trip! Better than a Zamboni ride.

The reality of how really big this show is going to be hadn’t fully sunk in until we got to the XL Center. The tour director, Tom Marzullo, Scooter and I came into it with all these huge ideas, and, once we started rehearsals, I was blown away at how amazing it’s going to be. Huge rigs sailing through the air. A two-story stage with ramps and platforms. Elevator rigs raise giant set pieces sky high and sink back down into the underworld. We’ve got fog machines, follow spots, my dancers and me flying fifteen feet above the floor – it’s a huge super-cool production. I can’t believe I’m here at the center of it all, and I feel a huge responsibility not to screw it up.

“It’s a lot,” Grandpa says, as if he’s reading my mind. “It’s... it’s a lot. But you’ll do okay, Justin. You just do what you do, and it’ll work out fine.”

... we were underground, but we’re on the surface now.

He has tears in his eyes. He does that a lot lately. He gets very emotional when he comes face to face with everything that’s happened in my life. He’s been known to burst into tears during TV interviews, and he’s not at all hung up about that. This guy’s a hockey-loving, elk-hunting, head-butting Canadian dude, tougher than anybody I know. I think that’s why he’s not afraid to show his feelings – how much he loves us, how proud he is of me and Mom and all his kids and grandkids – and that’s why I’m not afraid to show my feelings either. (Well, most of the time. Within reason. You know what I’m saying.) I’m finally taller than my grandpa, but I’ll always look up to him. He’s there for me when I need him and has been since my earliest memories.

CHAPTER 2
A SECRET MUSICIAN

The day I was born, March 1, 1994, Celine Dion was solid at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “The Power of Love.” Not a bad song to start your life on. My musical director Dan Kanter, whose guilty pleasure is Celine Dion, must have been really excited that day. It was all over the radio, so I probably heard her belting it out before I got my first look at the blue sky over Stratford, Ontario. My hometown is 2,450 miles northeast of Los Angeles, 530 miles northwest of New York City, 1,312 miles due north of Disney World, and totally on the other side of the world from Tokyo. But that day, people all over the planet were listening to Celine Dion and loving it.

I am a proud Canadian and I hope that comes through in everything I do. I love hockey, maple syrup and Caramilk bars. Canada is an awesome country in general, and Stratford is an excellent place to call home. The people are nice, but not easily impressed. I go back there to visit Grandpa and Grandma and my friends, Ryan and Chaz, as often as I can, and everybody treats me the same as always.

Stratford is a small town of about 30,500 people, named after Stratford-upon-Avon in England, which is the birthplace of William Shakespeare. So it makes sense that there’s always a lot of comedy and drama going on and that our Stratford is the home of a huge Shakespeare festival – the biggest in North America. Every summer, about a million tourists come through to see the plays at the Avon Theatre, check out the local arts and crafts and poke around the town, which gets pretty quiet in the winter.

“Everybody treats me the same as always”

If you’re looking at a map of North America, you’ll see that Ontario is that little triangle of Canada that cuts down into the Great Lakes between New York and Michigan. Stratford is actually pretty close to the United States, halfway between Detroit and Buffalo, but, when I say I’m from Canada, some people think that means I came in from the North Pole on a dog sled or something. Sometimes it does seem like winter lasts forever, but it’s more because the kids are dying for the school year to be over. Summers are hot and muggy, but always a lot of fun. In the fall, the whole place is blazing with colors like you cannot believe. In the spring, it’s incredibly beautiful. The snowmen keel over or get kicked down, the slush piles melt away, and the grass on the baseball diamond sort of struggles to wake up. The air is clean. Everything smells like wet pine trees.

“I’m a proud Canadian and I hope that comes through in everything I do”

“My dad has influenced not only my life but my music”

My mom and dad were in their late teens when I was born. Not that much older than I am now. (And, yeah, that kinda freaks me out, so I don’t dwell on it.) My dad, Jeremy Bieber, was basically a kid, doing his best to handle huge adult responsibilities. Lately, I’ve started to understand how hard that is. He and I have always had a great relationship, and as the story goes on you’ll see how he’s influenced not only my life but my music. I admire my mom so much for how she stepped up to meet all the challenges in her life.

My parents broke up when I was ten months old. Shortly afterwards, my dad started working on construction jobs out of town. Mom basically worked her butt off at whatever job she could get to keep a roof over our heads. We lived in public housing, and there were no luxuries at our little apartment, but it never occurred to me that we were poor. We had each other, which was everything we needed.

While Mom was working, I went to daycare, but I also spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I had a room at their house, and Grandma painted it blue and white with Toronto Maple Leafs stuff all over the walls. There was never any question about it: I was into hockey from day one, and the Maple Leafs were my favorite team.

Every summer, Grandpa and Grandma took us up to Star Lake, where they rented a cabin that belonged to the rod-and-gun club. Grandma’s brothers and sisters would come, and Grandpa and I would go fishing with Grandma’s dad. Being French Canadian, he didn’t speak English, and Grandpa didn’t speak French, so there wasn’t much conversation going on. But that’s a cool thing I learned from fishing: sometimes you don’t need conversation. Ha ha.

I spoke both French and English from the time I was little, so I could interpret when needed.

“I’d really love to have a nice girlfriend”

Grandpa would say, “Ask him if he’s hungry.”

And I’d go, Avez-vous faim?

Great-grandpa would nod enthusiastically. Mais oui, j’ai très faim.

But, for the most part, they both knew the important words. Fish, poisson. Boat, bateau. Water, l’eau. Thanks, merci. You’re welcome, pas de quoi. I have to pee, j’ai envie de faire pipi. What else do you really need to know to get along?

“Fishing’s not something you have to talk about. It just happens,” Grandpa says, and it seems to me that a lot of things in life are that way. I mean, think how nice it is when you can hang out with someone and not have to fill up the air with small talk. I hate being on a date where both people are working too hard to come up with stuff to say. You know it’s working when you can just chill – listen to music, watch a movie or whatever – without feeling like you have to force the conversation. It should just be natural. When it’s working, there’s room in the air for both people to say things that matter. Scooter gave me the smartest dating advice you could ever give – to a guy or a girl – just listen. And that means really listen to what the other person is saying instead of using that time to come up with your next clever remark.

Anyway. Yeah. Quiet mornings out on the water. There’s not much of that in my life anymore. I’m going at light speed 24/7 – and I love it. I’m grateful for all the blessings and opportunities that have come my way. But I will say that when I was little, I longed for a “normal” life with a “normal” family, and there’s no way that’s ever going to happen now. There’s a circus going on around me everywhere I go, which makes it hard on my family sometimes. I’d really love to have a nice girlfriend, but she’d have to put up with all that. You won’t hear me complain about how my life is going, but I hope someday I’ll be out on Star Lake with my own grandkid, reeling in brown trout and telling stories about how all of us would get together by the fire pit in the evening, everybody laughing and talking at once, the same way we did at Christmas dinner.

BIG FAMILY CHRISTMAS

Our tradition was always to gather at Grandpa and Grandma’s house early in the afternoon. She’d have the tree up and decorated with all the usual ornaments dragged down from the attic. People would start showing up, and by dinner time there was quite a crowd gathered. And not just the usual grandparents, kids, grandkids. Our extended family is really – well, I guess “extended” is a good word.

See, my mom’s biological father died when she was a baby, so Grandpa is totally her dad, but technically he’s her stepfather, who married Grandma when Mom was two, which is how my mom actually ended up with a half-brother and a stepbrother both named Chris, because Grandpa already had kids from a previous marriage. It would suck for her stepsiblings and their kids not to be with their dad/grandpa at Christmas, so Grandpa’s ex-wife and her husband come with their kids, plus cousins on this side, and step-sibs on the other side, and after a while it’s pretty complicated trying to keep track of which cousin belongs to whose aunt, or who’s the stepson of the great-uncle, or the grandkid of the step-aunt – and you end up realizing it really doesn’t make any difference.

We’re a family.

We all have Christmas dinner, and I’m telling you, my grandma puts up an awesome Christmas dinner. Turkey and gravy. I wish I could have a trough of that stuff on my bus after the show. (We all work up an appetite during a performance.) It’s the best. We all eat until we’re about to roll over. Then we play this gift-exchange game with dice. Everybody shows up with a gift. If you’re a girl, bring a gift for a girl; if you’re a guy, bring a gift for a guy. That way there’s the right number of each. You take turns rolling the dice, and, if you roll doubles, you grab a gift. If you roll doubles again, you get to grab somebody else’s gift. There’s always a lot of horsing around and teasing, but nobody actually gets mad because you don’t know what’s in the package anyway, so why would you care if your gift gets stolen? You get another turn, and the game keeps going until everybody has a gift. Then we all open our gifts and end up trading anyway.

That’s how we are in my family. Every person gives what they have. If this particular gift isn’t what you need, maybe that gift over there works for you, and, meanwhile, the first gift is exactly what somebody else needs. You can’t always get what you want. But, if you’re lucky, you get what you need. And I was lucky. Along with a lot of other blessings, I got my family – just the way they are. And now my extended family extends even wider to include Scooter, Carin, Kenny, Ryan and Dan and a lot of other people I’ll tell you about a little later in this book.

“That’s how we are in my family. Every person gives what they have”

DOWN TO EARTH

I wrote the song “Down to Earth” a few years ago, and I was really excited to record it for the My World album. It’s a huge fan favorite. So many people feel where I’m coming from. It doesn’t need any spectacular stage effects in the touring show; the best thing I can do is just sing it straight from my heart. I’m not afraid to show my emotions; if you love someone, you should tell them. If you think a girl is beautiful, you should say that. Usher says some songs work best when there’s a sob in the singer’s voice. You gotta let that deep feeling come through. And that’s how I felt about this song. Sometimes the emotion of it is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

No one has a solid answer.

We’re just walking in the dark.

And you can see the look on my face,

It just tears me apart...

So we fight through the hurt

And we cry and cry and cry and cry

And we live and we learn

And we try and try and try and try

“‘Look for the good,’ Grandpa says”

At the end of the day, families are what they are. If you feel like a freak because you don’t have a normal family, I’ve got news for you: pretty much nobody does. In fact, I don’t know if there’s any such thing as a “normal” family, and if there is, they’d probably be the most boring people ever. Or the scariest. Seriously, it would be creepy to even have dinner with the Perfect Family. The whole time you’d be thinking they can’t be this perfect, they’re probably holding the butcher’s knife under the table ready to kill me, or they’ve got a mailman chained up in the basement or something. All families – even the ones that seem perfect on the outside – have their issues to some degree. What counts is how you handle it.

“Look for the good,” Grandpa says.

In our family, all the kids know they’re loved, and, for the most part, everybody’s able to just get over themselves and be cool. You just love and accept everybody as they are. You forgive others and hope that others will forgive you, because God forgives us all six hundred times a day, and he doesn’t sit around busting heads about it.

So it’s up to you and it’s up to me

That we meet in the middle

On our way back down to earth...

My dad was away at work a lot of the time, and, yeah, that sucked for me sometimes. It sucked for him, too. But in life you realize that the world’s not perfect and if it had been up to us we’d have been together all of the time. And it sucked for my mom, because being a single parent is never easy, especially with a little prankster like me. There were times when my mind went to “What if such and such?” or “It could have been like da-da-da.”

But, as of right now, my life is working out pretty sweet and every morning I wake up grateful for the blessings that I have.

“I admire her so much for how she got her life together and made a life for me”

Two of those blessings are my new baby brother, Jaxon, and my little sister, Jazmyn, who are my dad’s children and are the cutest kids in the world. I would do anything for them.

Now I’m on the road, I won’t be around as much as I wish I could be while they’re growing up, but they’ll always know I’m their big brother and I love them. I wouldn’t trade them for all the what-ifs and could-have-beens in the world.

My mom has been up front and honest with me about the choices she made when she was my age, some of which were not the best and made life difficult for her and her family. Before I was born, she started going to church, and that became super-important to her. She could see the kind of person and the kind of Mom she wanted to be.

After she had me, she had to work really hard all the time, but she never complained. She let me be myself, but she kept an eagle eye on me, stayed strong about discipline, and impressed on me the importance of doing the right thing and keeping God in my life. I admire her so much for how she learned from her mistakes, got her life together, and made a life for me.

STAR-CROSSED LOVERS

I was two years old in 1996 when The Cardigans had their monster hit “Lovefool,” the lead single from their First Band on the Moon album. It was featured in this crazy film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which is also dope. Any guy can relate to Romeo, who’s trying really hard to be cool in front of his crew, but he can’t stop looking at all these beautiful girls all over Verona, and then he falls victim to one of the killer crushes of all time.

My friends say I’m a fool to think that you’re the one for me.

I guess I’m just a sucker for love...

That’s me. Total sucker for love. That’s not a bad thing. What kind of jerk doesn’t want love? I bet 95% of sixteen-year-old guys would admit to thinking forty-five girl-related thoughts every three minutes. (The other 5% would be lying.) Everybody wants love, and there’s something about that Romeo and Juliet theme – the star-crossed lovers who can’t be together because of what other people have to say about it.

“It’s universal,” says Dan Kanter (my lead guitarist, musical director – and possibly nicest guy in the world). “It strikes a chord.”

Dan looks like a young version of Paul Simon and plays like – like – well, he plays like Dan Kanter. I can’t even think of anything to compare it to. Except maybe a mix of Fergie and Jesus. He has a bachelor’s degree in classical composition and analysis and is currently getting his master’s degree in musicology.

“Not a performance degree,” he specifies. “Music in society. I try not to think about theory when I’m on stage, but classical music taught me that art history was very linear, and now it’s fragmented, and I really enjoy that.”

Okaaaaaay??? I’m not really sure what he’s talking about but obviously Dan is pretty smart. I guess what he might be trying to say is music is part of all of our lives, that it’s like a timeline. Looking back, I see this trail of music, a million great songs that came out of the radio and passed through my head over the years, and every once in a while one of them pops up in something I’m doing now, because it’s all part of me.

Tom really took our vision on and designed a crazy cool opening for the touring show, and I don’t want to give any of the surprises away, but I get to sort of emerge from the fog and slam into “Love Me.” The show’s opening makes me sound like a bad-ass.

“I get to sort of emerge from the fog and slam into ‘Love Me.’ The show’s opening makes me sound like a bad-ass.”

BEAT IT

Back in 1996, Mom says I was all about the beat. And I suppose that makes sense. Before anything else, you gotta have rhythm. She loved pop music and played the radio loud when we were in the car. At home, she’d crank her stereo listening to Boyz II Men or Michael Jackson. I’d wail on whatever was handy – pots and pans, plastic bowls, tables and chairs – with whatever else was handy. Like a spoon or the phone or my fists. She got me a little toy drum kit, probably to keep me from destroying the place, and I hammered on that until people started noticing I was actually laying down a pretty sick beat.

My mom is an absolute sweetheart who has this vivacious, goofy personality, so there were always a lot of interesting, artsy people hanging around our place. I think artsy people who can’t afford to go anywhere tend to hang out in the living room of the coolest person, playing guitars and talking about philosophy or whatever, and that’s the living room I grew up in. (I guess I just also realized that with my mom being single, a lot of those guys were probably hitting on her, but again: freakout factor. Not gonna go there.)

At the church my mom went to, there was a lot of music during worship, and most of it was backed by a contemporary praise band. The people in the band were friends, and, while we were hanging out with them, sometimes the percussionist would let me play with the various noisemakers. When he saw that I wanted to play – not just play – he’d let me sit on his knee while he played on the drum kit, and, after a while, he handed me the sticks and let me have a go at it.

By the time I was four or five, I could climb up on the stool and play the kit all by myself, and, about that same time, I discovered I could get up on the piano bench and pound on that, too.

Much to everyone’s surprise, it started sounding like actual music.

So here might be a good place to stop and say that if there’s an annoying little kid in your life – a little brother or some kid you babysit for – who wants to make noise and pretend to play music, I hope you’ll put up with him. Because, at some point, he won’t be playing anymore. He’ll be playing. Kids have to be allowed to do things they’re no good at. How else are they supposed to learn?

And, while you’re at it, you have to let yourself do stuff you’re not good at. Don’t get hung up on what other people think about what you’re doing. Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we do only the stuff we’re good at, we never learn anything new. Think of all the great possibilities in life that pass by because we’re too chicken to explore them and risk looking like a loser. Screw the haters who have nothing better to do than make fun of people who are brave enough to put themselves out there. Get out of your comfort zone and go for it. You never know unless you try.

‘Nuff said. Back to when I was five.

“You have to let yourself do stuff you’re not good at”

I was actually getting to be pretty good on the drums, and not too heinous on the piano. Mom and one of her musician friends Nathan McKay, who my grandparents called “the Lion King” because of his big, bushy beard, decided that I needed a real drum set of my very own. Nathan, aka “the Lion King,” and a bunch of his friends pulled together a little benefit event at a local bar, where they played music and collected donations to buy me my first real trap set with a kick drum, floor toms, snare, hi-hat and boom cymbal. I went crazy on it. Now Mom had to crank the stereo loud enough for me to play along.

Some of the church band people were playing at the fair that summer, and they invited me to play drums with them, but I was so little that the emcee couldn’t see me sitting there ready to play. He was like, “Well, I see you guys brought a drum set, but where’s the drummer?” I gave him a little tasty lick – ba-dum-bum-chhh! – and he stretched to see me back there behind the cymbal boom. Then he goes to the audience, “You won’t believe this. No way! There’s a little guy back there with his hat on backwards.”

I kept playing and getting better over the next couple of years. It got to be 2000, 2001, and you know what that means.

Beyoncé.

Destiny’s Child blew up out of Houston and killed everybody with “Survivor” and “Bootylicious.” That same year, I heard Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’,” and I still can’t get enough of that song. Usher murdered “U Remind Me.” Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot did that crazy cool video for “Get Ur Freak On,” and there was that insane remake of “Lady Marmalade” by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mya and Pink. Plus, we heard from Outkast, Nelly, Uncle Kracker, Mary J. Blige – all in all, it was a very good year for music.

FEELING THE MUSIC

When I was six, I started first grade at Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School in Stratford, but after school I was banging on those drums and getting my musical education on the radio. I was also figuring things out on the piano. I couldn’t read music (I was just beginning to read books), and Mom couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I knew what I wanted the music to sound like. I could feel it when the chords and melody didn’t fit together, the same way you can feel it when your shoes are on the wrong feet. I just kept poking and experimenting until it fit the way I wanted it to. When I listened to music in church, I could feel those harmonies hanging in the air like humidity. It wasn’t an issue of learning it exactly: it was more as if the music soaked in through my skin. I don’t know how else to explain it.

As soon as I was big enough to get my arms around a guitar, I started figuring that out, too. You have to build up strength in your hands, and, until you build calluses on your fingertips, it feels like razor blades. That probably discourages a lot of people. They start out thinking, “Hey, playing guitar would be fun. And it looks pretty easy.” After thirty minutes or so, they’re like, “Ow! This really hurts.” And they forget about how much fun it was supposed to be and give up.

The thing is, if you keep on it, you get used to it pretty fast, and then you just keep plugging away at it while you’re watching TV or waiting for supper. Or sitting in your room because you’re grounded for mouthing off. But we don’t need to go into that. The point is, I played guitar because it was fun, and, by the time I was eight or nine, I was all right.

“Mom couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I knew what I wanted the music to sound like... it soaked in through my skin”

The best times were when my dad was one of the people hanging out playing guitar in our living room. He wasn’t a big fan of pop music. He was more into classic rock and heavy metal. He taught me some stuff like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and a few other Dylan songs, turned me onto Aerosmith, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses, which got me listening to (and showing respect for) the legends like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. My dad taught me how to play “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, and I still remember it. (You should hear Dan Kanter and me kill that thing.)

To play metal or even the 1980s hair band stuff like Journey and Twisted Sister, you’ve gotta know the so-called power chords, and Dad taught me a few tricks there, too. He showed me how to play barré chords, which is when you lay your index finger flat across all the strings at once, which moves the chords up a little on the neck of the guitar. You’re essentially playing the same chords, but changing the key, so you can play the song in whatever range fits your voice. If you know the basic form of five or six barré chords, you can play pretty much any song in the universe. Grab the lyrics off the Web, listen to the changes and progressions five or six times, and there you go. You’re Green Day. In your room, that is.

ROCKIN’ ROBIN

I was Metallica and Matchbox 20 in my room at night, but at school by day I was just me. Nobody at school knew anything about this part of my life. I was a hockey kid like all my friends, and I liked it that way. I was already a little odd because Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School was a French immersion school. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re immersed in French. They don’t speak English at all. The idea is that you learn to speak French while you’re learning to add and subtract and all the other things you’d be learning at a regular school.

I had a lot of friends at my French school, but, when I was seven or eight, I started playing house league hockey with a bunch of guys who went to regular English-speaking public school. I didn’t need them to think I was a music geek in addition to being a French geek. (Of course, now I’m really glad that I speak French, because, let’s face it, girls dig it when a guy speaks French. They call it the language of love, and that ain’t no coincidence. Plus, I love my French fans! Très jolie!)

My best friends – from that day to this – were my hockey mates, especially Chaz Somers and Ryan Butler, and, man, did we have fun back then!

We weren’t bad kids at all, but we were kinda out of control at times. We’d go down in the basement at Grandpa and Grandma’s house to watch TV and end up playing kickball with the couch pillows or battling a soccer ball back and forth or practically strangling each other with professional wrestling moves. We never destroyed anything major, but there were a few small casualties. A couple of lamps were sacrificed. And, among Grandpa’s hunting trophies, there’s a stuffed fox that mysteriously ended up missing a leg.

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