High School of Art and Design

Well, I met Joey, the guitar player, and I met Joey in...

In high school, actually, we both were going to the High School of Art and Design in the city.

And we were actually, I was a long hair metalhead standing at a bus stop.

And he was like this punk rocker with like almost like a curly devil lock.

I grew up in New York City, if you can't already tell.

Born in 63, so say I was 14 years old in 77, 15 years old in 78, went to the High School of Art and Design on 57th Street and 2nd Avenue.

My father had his own business.

I knew New York City.

If you're into basketball, if you're into football, if you're into ice skating, if you're into climbing mountains, whatever you're into, you could take it to the nth degree no matter what.

I think for me, one of the other really, really inspiring pieces of this story is how you didn't succeed at first, right? There were many situations where, for example, when you were trying to get into the High School of Art and Design, which is really, really important part of your story, you didn't get in the first time.

And as a young person, you had always been told you're the best artist.

You know, everybody kind of gassed you up.

Also in the book, I feel like there's a lot of like luck.

I don't want to give myself all the credit because there's also a lot of luck, a lot of mystery and also probably God that like saved me because there's so many things that are so unexplainable that line up at the perfect moments that kind of helped me get through.

And, you know, one of them is that My dream was to get into the high school of art and design and every kid in school, elementary school, middle school always told me I was the best artist.

So I always had this like ego, like I'm the artist kid, I'm the artist.

Yeah

... and getting ready to go to high school in Manhattan at the Art and, High School of Art and Design in Manhattan

Oh, wow.

Legendary

And being a citizen of New York City, one of the things that was really cool about it is that New York has five specialized high schools.

One of them being the High School of Art and Design.

There's Music and Art.

There's Bronx Science.

Each have their specialties.

And High School of Art and Design, which was on 57th Street and 2nd Avenue...

That was for people who wanted to go into commercial art and advertising.

And it was a very interesting school.