Face the Music: A Life Exposed (49 page)

I wanted Evan to know that our home was for the two of us—it was our world. One way I tried to declare this was to have a massive floor-to-ceiling fresco of the two of us put into my bedroom. The house was not a home when Pam and I divorced, so I decided to make this fresco the centerpiece—both as a way to lay claim to the space and to illustrate the world I wanted to create for Evan. It was based on a nineteenth-century oil painting—a hunting party, Greek gods, nude maidens, cherubs, the works. Only I had the artist place me and Evan front and center, wearing togas with laurel wreaths around our heads. In the landscape around us were horses and dogs and dozens of bare-chested nubile maidens.

An extreme example of poor bachelor-pad taste? No way. No, no, no. For some reason, I thought this massive fresco was absolutely spectacular and something to display with pride. Erin, it would turn out, did not share this opinion.

After Erin and I had been seeing each other for more than a year, I thought it was time to introduce her to Evan. But again, I didn’t want him to feel threatened. So I decided to have them meet in a neutral location. I told Evan I had a friend who, like him, loved candy. I said we were going to visit a candy store at a shopping center and she was going to meet us there. She came and met Evan, but I never held her hand or kissed her. Only slowly over the course of many months, as Evan learned to get used to her and like her, did we start to reveal our affection a little more. As he became closer to Erin, I allowed him to see me and her becoming closer as well. It was a parallel course—I hoped that in his eyes our relationship was evolving in front of him.

Pam and I never badmouthed each other to Evan, and for that I’m so grateful to her. Neither of us wanted him to become a pawn in any disputes between us. I see things very simply. If you want to take it to logical extremes, it all boils down to one basic question: do you hate your ex more than you love your child? As long as you love your child more, there’s no basis for bad words or denying access or anything like that. Which also meant Erin never represented a replacement or a threat.

Further on down the road, Erin, Evan, and I took a trip together. I wanted him to see that Erin slept over sometimes, but again, I wanted it to happen in a neutral setting. We checked into a resort in Santa Barbara, and when we went into the room, Evan asked, “Where’s Erin going to sleep?”

“With me,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, without any surprise or discomfort. And we moved on.

By that time in my life I firmly believed we heal ourselves by helping others. My making Evan the center of things for me benefited everyone. It was such a joy to see a happy child.

When Erin and I finally moved in together, she told me she wasn’t crazy about the fresco in the bedroom. “We don’t have to lose it,” I said. “I mean, we can add you into it. You can be one of the maidens. You live here now—you can be on there, too.”

“I hate it,” she finally admitted. “I’ve always hated it.”

I was shocked. Then suddenly I found myself chuckling. When I stepped back, it
did
look like something from
This Is Spinal Tap.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.

Then I went to the storage room and grabbed some paint and a couple of paint rollers and we painted over the thing together.

S
ometime after Erin moved in, Evan, who was about ten at the time, accidentally locked himself out on the balcony off his bedroom. Erin and I were downstairs and didn’t realize it. At one point I heard a noise but couldn’t place it.

Wait, was that somebody shouting?

Suddenly it dawned on me that Evan might be locked out. Erin and I ran upstairs. Evan was beside himself out on the balcony. We opened the door. And he came running in—right past me and into Erin’s arms.

Some parents might have felt insulted by that, but I thought it was the greatest thing that he felt that way about her. It assured me that their relationship was strong and loving, too.

While on vacation with Erin in Hawaii in 2003, a gallery owner approached me and asked about doing something for his gallery—something like signed guitars. “I paint,” I told him. He asked to see some of my paintings. After I showed him photos, he wanted to mount a show.

Me? An art show?

It sounded odd. Now granted, this wasn’t some swank New York gallery. But still.

We organized the show and I went back to Hawaii for the opening. We sold $35,000 worth of paintings, which certainly exceeded all my expectations, since I had never expected to sell anything. It was quickly clear to me that if credibility came from being a starving artist, I would have to cross that off my list.

After that, I had the bug. I wanted to do the same thing on the mainland. Soon enough, I had a deal in place with a chain of galleries around the country. We did a series of shows, and I felt as if I was exposing some people to a potentially enriching aspect of culture—the visual arts—who might not otherwise get exposed to it. The same thing had been true when I did
Phantom of the Opera,
where I’m sure some KISS fans made their first foray into musical theater. I felt I was breaking down some of the snobbery that I think ultimately does a disservice to the arts. People sometimes would come up to me at a show and tell me, “I don’t know anything about art, but I like this piece.”

“What do you need to know?” I would say. “Something either moves you or it doesn’t.”

I found it gratifying when people said a piece made them think of something from their own lives or sparked them to tell me a story about their own families. Seeing people affected by my paintings validated my work in a way I probably never would have experienced otherwise.

Bill Aucoin came to one of my art shows. He had leveled out, and it was great to see him. Bill was warm and supportive. As the friendship was rekindled and KISS began to tour again—with Eric and Tommy—Bill came to a few concerts as well as more art shows. Over time we did a good deal of talking about the past. He told me how he had seen me as defensive and unhappy in the early days—unfulfilled, guarded. He loved the transformation he saw in me, what he called growth. He loved Erin, and he made a big point of how happy it made him to see that I had evolved to a better place. I was touched.

Eventually I would take a break from showing my art, even though my sales had by then passed the $2 million mark. I had started painting as a way to let off pressure. It was something I did without a schedule, without anyone asking questions. Painting was a big commitment since I had no training—it took a lot of time and effort and thought. There was no need for me to turn it into a business. I didn’t want it to become a chore, especially as the band began to tour regularly again.

One day back in L.A., Erin and I were chatting about the state of our relationship. We started talking about her mother, who had spent decades working as an elementary school teacher. “So what does your mom think is going to happen between us?” I asked. “What does she think of this whole thing?”

“Oh,” Erin said, “my mom thinks either it will move forward at some point or it will fall apart.”

I love this photo. It says it all to me.

It hit me at that moment:
This isn’t going to fall apart
.

I couldn’t imagine not being with Erin. I knew then and there that I wanted to be with her forever.

We’d been together several years at that point. It wasn’t a passing infatuation. Our relationship wasn’t about love at first sight. The depth of my feelings for her grew out of our experiences together. It built over time.

I called a jeweler in New York City and asked them to send me one of their booklets. A ring jumped out at me immediately. Next, I picked out a stone.

When the ring was finished, I carried it around waiting for the right moment to ask Erin to marry me. But I couldn’t find that moment.

We took another trip to Vegas in 2005 and returned to Picasso for a great meal. We both loved the place and were enjoying ourselves and drinking the wine pairings. I got pretty buzzed, in fact. I had figured this would be the place to pop the question, but I wanted to propose to her with a clear head.

The next day, I kicked myself.

Fuck, when am I going to do this?

A friend of mine had lent me his private jet to fly home on—which is something I never imagined I’d say in my life. I thought perhaps that would be the perfect place—the sunlight at forty thousand feet would make the ring really shine. But when we got on the plane, all my neurotic tendencies came into play:
Damn it, these windows are polarized, I won’t get a sparkle on the ring.

We landed back in L.A. and drove home.

I have to do this!

We got home. Off our bedroom is a balcony overlooking the pool and guesthouse—more things I never envisioned in my life. It was a beautiful sunny day. “Come on out here,” I called to Erin from the balcony. “We should go for a swim.”

She walked out onto the balcony. We had literally just walked into the house, but I couldn’t wait any longer. She was leaning over the railing looking down over the pool, and I stood behind her, wrapped my arms around her, and held the ring before her eyes.

Her reaction was a cross between panic and crying as she blurted, “Oh, my God!” She didn’t seem to know what to do.

“Will you marry me?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said.

Then we called her mom to tell her the news—that we were moving forward, not falling apart.

We planned the wedding in a single afternoon. Everyone said they’d never seen anything go so quickly. But I thought, hey, if we want peach-colored flowers, what does it matter what kind they are? People tend to get hung up on minutia when it’s really about celebration.
Oh, we need to have these certain flowers from Africa
. . . Screw that. I did spend time picking every song the band would play, however, and since I wanted to go deep into the Motown catalogue, we got a horn section, multiple singers, and percussionists. It was an incredible sound, gloriously loud and unrelenting.

The outdoor wedding took place at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena in November 2005, with a relatively small group of friends and family.

As thin and beautiful as Erin is, she loves candy. So we arranged to have a candy bar there—every kind of candy, stuff I’d never seen, stuff that looked to me like a science project. She was in heaven.

And so was I.

We danced and danced and danced.

T
ommy and Eric came to the wedding, but Gene wasn’t invited. I told him well in advance. I didn’t want to go through the motions of inviting him just because he was my musical partner. He didn’t belong there. He was well known for his views on marriage—calling it an “institution” that he didn’t want to live in.

“Your views on marriage are your own,” I told him. “But when you insult and demean people who get married and ridicule or dismiss the idea of marriage, you have no place at a wedding.”

How somebody votes in a presidential election is one thing. But why ridicule people or the validity of their beliefs? It would have been insulting to have such a vocal opponent of marriage—somebody who went out of his way to say things I found offensive about the rationality and importance of marriage—at my wedding.

He got it.

But his opinions on marriage also began to shift. By the next year, when Tommy got married in 2006, Gene was very supportive. And Gene eventually married Shannon Tweed, his girlfriend of more than twenty-five years, in 2011.

Two months after Erin and I were married, we found out she was pregnant. We were ecstatic. Having children was always our plan, and we weren’t waiting to get started—I was fifty-three and Erin was thirty-three. During the pregnancy, reading books, going for sonograms, and searching for possible names only bonded us more. Erin looked incredible pregnant and loved every minute of it, which made the time all that much more joyous. Evan, too, was thrilled with the news, which put to rest any fears of mine that he might be angry or resentful. His only demand was that he be the first one to join us in the delivery room to greet his new sibling.

Once we found out we were having a boy, we went through hundreds of names and combinations before deciding on Colin Michael. Funny how after he was born, all of the other possibilities we had considered seemed so wrong.

Colin’s birth was a completely different experience from Evan’s. Erin started having contractions in the middle of the night, and I was there with a notepad timing the contractions and writing everything down. Eventually we drove to the hospital; again, I set up my tripod and video camera. I told the doctor who was going to deliver the baby that I wasn’t squeamish and wanted to be involved in the delivery as much as possible. When Erin was in the final minutes of labor, the doctor turned to me and said, “get your gloves on.” After a brief moment of panic, I pulled on some gloves, and as this little miracle began to emerge, I was told to pull him out. It was surreal as I lifted this little life out of the only world he had ever known and brought him into ours. Colin’s birth was another moment of deep connection with God and all the generations before me. He, too, would be my legacy and my connection to both past generations and future ones.