took off for Michael’s apartment in Silver Lake.
While driving over, my head flooded with memories. I remembered as kids how Michael believed in Santa and Santa’s elves. I’d dress up as an elf and run around the woods in back of our house. Then my parents, willing accomplices, would tell Michael to go look. He was completely fooled. Up to his early twenties, he still thought it was real, until it was casually mentioned one year over Christmas dinner. My brother had a delicate yet very old soul.
Only a month ago Michael had been happy for the first time in years. He was off dope, off crack. It felt like all our past troubles were behind us. He and his wife were on good terms and he was about to be granted visitation rights to his wonderful little girls.
Then his mirror image of himself snapped. For all the love in Michael’s heart for his family and friends, he had none for himself. He weighed 180 pounds, but had only ten pounds of faith in himself. Maybe that’s why they say that when you die, your shell loses ten pounds.
At some point during the drive over, I called Mary. She started wailing. This was unbelievably tragic, unbelievably sad. Out of instinct, I called Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, my sensei.
“What!” he screamed. “I lost my sister today!”
The ruthless law of mortality.
The horrible reality hit me between the eyes when I arrived at Michael’s apartment. The police were there along with some of his friends. The place was chaos—piles of dirty dishes, broken plates, dust, the stink of filthy clothes, the smell of death. I walked to Michael’s bed. He was stretched out; he seemed comfortable; his eyes were closed. It looked like him but it didn’t feel like him.
A note was taped to his refrigerator, referring to his little girls: “Live for Sophia and Claudette.” Was it a suicide note, or was it written in an inspired moment to remind himself of what he had to live for? I’ll never know.
His heart gave out. Drugs, sure, but Michael died of a broken heart. That day a big part of me died as well.
Later we learned that it was cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that four years earlier had been diagnosed by Dr. Drew Pinsky for me, not Michael, when I was in the throes of heroin detox.
Why Michael and not me?
Why was I always able to pick myself up off the ground and muddle through? Why didn’t Michael have that ability?
There’s a line in a Nirvana song that goes, “I miss the comfort of being sad.”
That was Michael, but never me. Yet now I do feel that comfort of being sad. I miss the comfort of feeling anything.
Emptiness.
Loss.
A brother gone.
All this happened when we were making the second Velvet Revolver record, Libertad .
The brother of Matt Sorum, the Velvet Revolver drummer, also died during that same period.
We were left alone, haunted by questions of what we might have done, what we could have done, what we didn’t do.
In a song on that record called “For a Brother” I wrote:
Could and should have been
And didn’t
I’ve given up my hand for a brother
Given up a hand for free
I’ve risen and forgiven and I’ve pardoned
But you set yourself free
That word—freedom, libertad .
Another song on Libertad , “The Last Fight”:
Break the chains of featherweights and giants
With disdain for everlasting lives!
They’ll refrain when we spit out the fire
And start living
IN THE WAKE OF MICHAEL’S TRAGIC DEATH, things got worse with me and Mary. We started binge drinking. Our nanny would watch the kids; we’d go out for dinner, get plastered, and come home and have great sex. There were other times, however, when Mary showed no interest in drinking and sex at all. I could never tell. It was always a flip of a coin. Her mood swings, combined with my mood swings, could flip us in any direction. For Libertad , I wrote a song I couldn’t call anything but “Mary, Mary.”
Mary, Mary by my side
Atomic love the kind you cannot buy
Black
While driving over, my head flooded with memories. I remembered as kids how Michael believed in Santa and Santa’s elves. I’d dress up as an elf and run around the woods in back of our house. Then my parents, willing accomplices, would tell Michael to go look. He was completely fooled. Up to his early twenties, he still thought it was real, until it was casually mentioned one year over Christmas dinner. My brother had a delicate yet very old soul.
Only a month ago Michael had been happy for the first time in years. He was off dope, off crack. It felt like all our past troubles were behind us. He and his wife were on good terms and he was about to be granted visitation rights to his wonderful little girls.
Then his mirror image of himself snapped. For all the love in Michael’s heart for his family and friends, he had none for himself. He weighed 180 pounds, but had only ten pounds of faith in himself. Maybe that’s why they say that when you die, your shell loses ten pounds.
At some point during the drive over, I called Mary. She started wailing. This was unbelievably tragic, unbelievably sad. Out of instinct, I called Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, my sensei.
“What!” he screamed. “I lost my sister today!”
The ruthless law of mortality.
The horrible reality hit me between the eyes when I arrived at Michael’s apartment. The police were there along with some of his friends. The place was chaos—piles of dirty dishes, broken plates, dust, the stink of filthy clothes, the smell of death. I walked to Michael’s bed. He was stretched out; he seemed comfortable; his eyes were closed. It looked like him but it didn’t feel like him.
A note was taped to his refrigerator, referring to his little girls: “Live for Sophia and Claudette.” Was it a suicide note, or was it written in an inspired moment to remind himself of what he had to live for? I’ll never know.
His heart gave out. Drugs, sure, but Michael died of a broken heart. That day a big part of me died as well.
Later we learned that it was cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that four years earlier had been diagnosed by Dr. Drew Pinsky for me, not Michael, when I was in the throes of heroin detox.
Why Michael and not me?
Why was I always able to pick myself up off the ground and muddle through? Why didn’t Michael have that ability?
There’s a line in a Nirvana song that goes, “I miss the comfort of being sad.”
That was Michael, but never me. Yet now I do feel that comfort of being sad. I miss the comfort of feeling anything.
Emptiness.
Loss.
A brother gone.
All this happened when we were making the second Velvet Revolver record, Libertad .
The brother of Matt Sorum, the Velvet Revolver drummer, also died during that same period.
We were left alone, haunted by questions of what we might have done, what we could have done, what we didn’t do.
In a song on that record called “For a Brother” I wrote:
Could and should have been
And didn’t
I’ve given up my hand for a brother
Given up a hand for free
I’ve risen and forgiven and I’ve pardoned
But you set yourself free
That word—freedom, libertad .
Another song on Libertad , “The Last Fight”:
Break the chains of featherweights and giants
With disdain for everlasting lives!
They’ll refrain when we spit out the fire
And start living
IN THE WAKE OF MICHAEL’S TRAGIC DEATH, things got worse with me and Mary. We started binge drinking. Our nanny would watch the kids; we’d go out for dinner, get plastered, and come home and have great sex. There were other times, however, when Mary showed no interest in drinking and sex at all. I could never tell. It was always a flip of a coin. Her mood swings, combined with my mood swings, could flip us in any direction. For Libertad , I wrote a song I couldn’t call anything but “Mary, Mary.”
Mary, Mary by my side
Atomic love the kind you cannot buy
Black
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