David Graham Autobiography

My dad, David Graham Sr. (1932-2008) was an excellent musician. He played trumpet like a pro and could play several inversions of any chord on guitar or piano. He started teaching me how to play some simple chords on the piano and guitar when I was eight or nine years old. At that time, I was into comic books (the Avengers, Daredevil, etc.) and was not the least bit interested in playing music. I didn't really even listen to anything except by overhearing my dad's Jazz: Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, etc., and the occasional Huapangos Vera Cruzanos he would put on to remind my mother of home. My sister, Virginia, listened to Grand Funk, Boston, Bad Company, Santana, etc., but I wouldn't realize how cool they were until many years later.

We lived in the Jemez Valley of northern New Mexico, a stunningly beautiful place. My dad was a teacher at the school. We were within a mile of the Jemez Indian Reservation. Maybe ten from the Zia. I had a horse named Dolly for awhile. Then I got a motorcycle I was allowed to ride around on. It was a desert paradise, complete with Mexicans, Cowboys and Indians.

Audie Meskimen, one of the cowboys, was a total troublemaker and my best friend. He was extremely influential in my early development. He was the first person I knew that played guitar. First with dirty magazines and weed. Long before all of that, on December 1, 1979, Audie and his wonderful mom called and said they had a couple of extra tickets to see Kiss at Tingley Coliseum in Albuquerque, and would little 13-1/2 year old David and 10 year old Luis like to attend?.

We got to go.

Oh my god. I was enraptured. Here were these guys with masks painted on their faces, wearing superhero suits, vomiting blood and shooting sparks out of their guitars amid explosions and flashing lights playing this loud, boy music. This was the perfect blend of the Hulk and Hendrix, Iron Man and Iron Maiden. They were incredible. My 13 year old brain reacted to it by opening some kind of mental floodgate. My life was changed forever, thanks to Audie and his mom.

I went home and picked up my dad's old nylon-string guitar and started trying to figure it out. I got his OK to join the Columbia Record Club where I got every single Kiss album. After I proved that I was serious by absorbing everything I could from Audie (who had an awesome hard-tail 70's Strat, a Fender twin and a Rogers drum set in his room and could play a bunch of Ventures songs), and learning a ton of Kiss songs (including some solos!), my wonderful father bought me a Univox bass and bass amp and a Conquistador semi-hollow electric. 

Bob Bottomley and David VanAntwerp were fellow students, a few years older than me, but our mutual love of comics had made us friends. Through them and their older sisters (we all had 'em), I was introduced to so much music. David had these older sisters, beautiful hippie chicks named Mary and Darlene, who listened to Van Halen, Blondie, Def Leppard, the Talking Heads, all sorts of early 80's eclectic bands, the Motels and the Tubes. They would point the speakers outside, crank it and throw a Frisbee.

Bob turned me on to Queen, Rush and Cheap Trick. He gave me The Yes Album for my 14th or 15th birthday and I absolutely loved it. Before too long I could play pretty much any Rush bass part and a ton of queen songs on guitar. I was practicing eight or nine hours a day, totally obsessed.

Noting my obsession and really enjoying the fact that his son was a musician, my dad made me the happiest kid in the world when he took me to Albuquerque (the big city) and bought me a Fender Quad-Reverb amp and a Gibson SG (holy shit!), then out of the Musician's friend catalog, a Vox wah, and Electro-Harmonix Big Muff and a Memory Man. I had a couple of lessons with Albuquerque Jazz-guy Ambrose Rivera, who showed me pentatonic and diatonic scales.

I got pretty good at playing guitar, if I do say so myself, pretty quickly. I convinced Bob to play bass, David to play drums and with me on guitar, we started a band called the Vandals. My dad was the band director at school so we got gigs! We played 2112 for about 200 students and 2000 Man and some other stuff for several hundred people at the Jemez Valley High School Class of 1980 graduation ceremony.

Then, in the summer of 1981, I met Eric McFadden.

There is so much more to write, but I'm tired.