Born Ready

I took my guitar with me to New York.

I moved there in September of '79 to go to NYU. I lived in the dorm in Greenwich Village. We were surrounded by art. I played my guitar on the front steps of the dorm. When I was brave enough, I took my electric out to Washington Square Park and plugged it into a Mouse amp and played Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Kiss and Adam & The Ant songs.

One afternoon in the Spring of '80 I was walking through the lobby of the dorm when I was approached by a guy who asked if I had been playing in the park the previous day.

"Yes," I answered with caution.

"We've got a band that's looking for a rhythm guitarist," he said and then invited me to an audition the next day. Intrigued by the suggestion, I accepted and took down the address to their rehearsal space.

When I showed up they were auditioning some guy that looked like a Deadhead. He played a hollow body electric and didn't fit in with the other guys at all. The song they played was sort of lame. Kind of a half-assed attempt to meld pop and rock. My enthusiasm began to wane.

When they bid the first guitarist a fond adieu, they asked me to hold on while they warm up. It seems the other guy showed up a little early and they hadn't had a chance to stretch out first. I sat back and watched while the REAL band showed themselves. I was stunned. The song they started playing was remarkable. It had a great riff and a memorably chorus. By the time they hit the bridge, I had my guitar out and began mimicking the chord changes. On top of that, Nat, the singer had tons of charisma and Jagger lips to boot.

They played one more smoking rocker and then called me up to plug in. Joe, the lead guitarist was about to teach me the chord changes for the song the original auditioner had played. I stopped him and said that i didn't like that song very much but would love to play the first song they had played on their own. The guys all looked at each other and shrugged and said "Okay." before Joe could show me the changes I shooed him off saying that I had it down already.

The band started playing the tune and I joined in immediately. I watched the bass player to make sure that I had the chord changes right. I got through the song the first time kind of tentatively and we all agreed to play it again. The second time through we flew. It was great. We were all so excited. At the end we looked at each other and laughed. Nat took off his hoody and had an Ace Frehley t-shirt on underneath. I knew I was in the right place.

We jammed for several more hours Joe teaching me some of their songs and then playing Kiss, Aerosmith and Rolling Stone songs. We were a band. They told me that the band was called Born Ready and they already had a record deal waiting in the wings. They were being courted by Carriere Records, a French subsidiary of Atlantic Records. Now that the line-up was complete, the band needed to head into the studio to record an honest to goodness demo.

More on Born Ready to come....