Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

to tell me what to do, and instead he basically turned my questions back on me. It would be quite a while before I realized this was the basis of therapy—it wasn’t about someone leading you through life by the hand.
    This doctor, a complete stranger, kind of furrowed his brow and looked away when I talked.
    Is he looking at me like I’m crazy?
    After that first session, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Still, I decided to try it again. Whatever it took.
    Roll up your sleeves .
    The next time I went, though, I asked to see a different doctor. Thankfully, they obliged. The second doctor was named Jesse Hilsen. I didn’t feel self-conscious around Dr. Hilsen. He didn’t look at me like I was nuts. He quickly made me realize that even though I thought the rest of the world was “normal” and that I was the outlier, that wasn’t true. Plenty of other people had issues that plagued them, too. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the one person in a million who felt his world caving in, felt himself imploding. Thank God. This was progress.
    I was still yearning for some support and reassurance at home, and I told my dad that I had started seeing a psychiatrist. He was dismissive. “You just want to be different,” he scowled.
    Then he got angry. “You think you’re the only one with problems?” he shouted.
    No, I knew I wasn’t. My sister had problems. And I suspected my dad did, too—though who knew what he was talking about that night when he wanted my forgiveness. But I wasn’t going to succumb to my problems or surrender in the face of them. I was going to try to tackle them. I was going to fight.
    I started meeting with Dr. Hilsen every Wednesday after school. I would stop at a deli near the hospital, buy a turkey sandwich with Russian dressing, sit on a bench in Central Park, and eat it—and then go see Dr. Hilsen. Each afternoon when I left, I was already looking forward to the next week. Talking with Dr. Hilsen represented a rope I could hold on to.
    Finally, I was doing something—taking charge of my destiny and improving myself. I was rising to the challenge.

7.
    I n early 1968, not long after I turned sixteen, Scott Muni’s English Power Hour broadcast a new hit on the British charts called “Fire Brigade,” by the Move. It was about a girl who was so hot that you need to call 9-1-1—run and get the fire brigade.
    Now, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile, and the Move was one of my favorite groups. And what I was doing at that point in terms of song writing was taking inspiration from songs I remembered from the radio. When I heard “Fire Brigade,” I loved the concept. So I sat down and began to hash out a song of my own using the same idea. I hadn’t heard the song enough to actually copy it musically, but I had grasped something that I really liked, and my chorus went like this:
    Get the firehouse
    ’cause she sets my soul afire
    I called the song “Firehouse.” This was real progress. With every new song I wrote, my sense of purpose grew stronger. I may not have had a social life, but I had music and a dream.
    So many people are miserable. They need someone to entertain them. Why can’t it be me?
    One day at high school a teacher pulled me aside. “Why aren’t you showing up for class? Why aren’t you applying yourself?” he asked me.
    “Because I’m going to be a rock star,” I said.
    As the guy looked at me, his face betrayed his thoughts: You poor fool . Then he forced a half-smile and said, “A lot of people want to be rock stars.”
    “Yeah,” I told him, “but I will be one.”
    Outside of my band, the Post War Baby Boom, I didn’t have anything else in my life—just my guitar, my stereo, and, more and more often, concerts. I envied the kids who had social circles and weekend get-togethers, but I didn’t have any of that. I had not figured out how to be part of things. So I often went to shows by myself. It was something fulfilling.
    In 1968 I saw Jimi Hendrix live in a