I dropped out of college when I was 18. To move to Los Angeles. To become a rock star. It’s true.

‘Twas the age of Guns n’ Roses and bad cocaine, you see, tight jeans and stack-heel boots and just the right amount of black eyeliner to go with your shredded T-shirt, all required costumery for littering the Sunset Strip at midnight with cheap flyers (Kinko’s, goldenrod) promoting your glammed-out hair-metal band, the one with the pouty lips and epic hair glued in place by more Aqua Net than 10,000 New Jersey senior proms, combined.

And lo, it was glorious.

It was also fabulously doomed. Every youngblood in the L.A. music school I attended (Musicians’ Institute, Hollywood) wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, everyone wanted to make epic rock, fill stadiums, inspire millions, be swarmed by girls, shred riffs to delight the gods, hang out with Tommy Lee and Slash in stripper-crammed opium dens of debauched awesomeness. I mean, who wouldn’t?