Frank Bello - Fathers, Brothers, Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, and Anthrax

this is a genuine rare bird book

Rare Bird Books

453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

Los Angeles, CA 90013

rarebirdbooks.com

Copyright 2021 by Frank Bello

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic.

For more information, address:

Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department

453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Set in Dante

epub isbn

: 9781644282489

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Bello, Frank, author. | McIver, Joel, author.

Title: Fathers , brothers , and sons : surviving anguish , abandonment , and Anthrax / Frank Bello; with Joel McIver.

Description: Includes index. | First Hardcover Edition | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2021.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781644282311 (hardcover) | 978-1-64428-248-9 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH Bello, Frank. | Anthrax (Musical group : U.S.) | Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography. | Heavy metal music. | Rock music. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Music | MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Heavy Metal

Classification: LCC ML420.B45 B45 2021 | DDC 782.42166/092dc23

This book is dedicated

to the strong women in my life who raised me and instilled the strength in me to always strive to be a better manmy mother, Rose, my grandmother, Tina, and my wife, Teresa.

I also dedicate this book to my son, Brandon. This is how your dad did it, and you can do it, too. Never say die, and never say I should have.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my brother, Anthony, who was taken from us in 1996. You were the best of us. We will meet again.

Foreword

Being men, we tend

not to talk about our emotions. If you say, Hi, how are you? to a woman, shell immediately tell you her life story, but we dont share our emotionseven though we all have deep wounds in us.

Its shameful how fathers, the male of the species, tend not to stick around for their families. Its not always because they have problems with alcohol and drugs. Sometimes men just give up and walk out on their kids. When you do that, you dont realize that you have scarred forever a young child who thinks they did something wrong.

What did I do wrong that my father left me?

Thats a question youll never be able to answer. I never have. My father left us when I was about seven years old, and even though I bought him houses and supported him until the day he died, I never went to visit him, and I did not go to his funeral. Of course, after that happened, I was ashamed. Like I said, those wounds will never heal. They last for a lifetime.

Thank God for this thing that we do: this suit of armor we wear onstage. Like Gestalt therapy, or Dr. Janovs primal scream therapylook it up!playing music allows us to be in a padded room and scream our heads off to try and get the rage out. Its part and parcel of what Franks band Anthrax and my band Kiss does. We get up and play aggressive music, and its an outlet. It lets out some of that rage, at least for a while. When youre quiet for a while, it creeps back, so its good to keep playing onstage in front of people.

In this book, Frank talks about finding healing by being a loving father himself. This was also the case for me. I was hesitant to get married forever. I met the loveliest woman, Shannon, and we were together for twenty-nine years before we got married. We had two kids together, and still I refused to get marrieduntil I finally married her when I was the age of sixty-two. Weve been married for nine years now, and its getting better and betterbut I was always afraid when I confronted myself.

I was afraid that I would turn into my father and abandon the family.

I have not done so.

In this book, youll read Franks memories of hanging around outside our management office in New York back in the seventies, waiting for Kiss to come out so he and his pal Tom could talk to us. I remember all those times, and I have to tell you, those memories stand out for me just as much as my memories of playing in front of 50,000 or 100,000 people. Thats terrific, too, but on a completely different level, because theres no intimacy. You dont get to have a conversation with somebody in that situation.

On the other hand, when you see the wide-eyed sense of wonder of a fan who comes up to you, you see what its really about. Above the fame, above the money, above the women, above all that, is the connection being made by band and fanand we got it back, dont kid yourself. If you think fans like Frank and his pal Tom got off on us, the fact that they had that bright-eyed sense of wonder got us off in return. It made us think, This is what its really about.

I remember when I was a fan myself. I used to hang out and bug Stan Lee and his secretary Flo Steinberg at the Marvel Comics office, and Stan used to write me postcards saying, You will do great things. Hang in there, true believer, and all that stuff. It was like a message from the gods to me as a little kid.

I think the great ones never forget where they came from. What Frank and his pal did was reignite the fire in us, as a reminder that we got everything we wanted. When they came around to talk to us, Frank thought he was bugging usbut its actually the opposite. I hope hell tell you that when he came around to bug us, we actually had conversations. Truth be told, it meant a lot to us.

All these years later, Frank has fans of his own. For those of you out there who want to hear something fresh, put on your Anthrax records and turn the bass up, along with some high end so you can hear the actual notes that Frank plays. Youll hear some very interesting stuff. As in a string quartet, he does what the cello would do. That idea goes back to the baroque era and the Renaissance, and to The Beatles. When you heard Paul McCartneys bass lines, they were hooks in and of themselves, and they didnt just follow the drums. Sometimes they jumped off the drums and went against them, or dropped out altogether. Train your ears and listen to what Franks bass is doing.

This is the important thing. When a little wide-eyed kid who wants to play bass comes up to Frank, Im sure that Frank wont forget himself as a little wide-eyed kid, too. I hope he takes the time to inspire that young fanbecause in a very real way, life is about a relay race. You run the best race you can, and then right in front of you is someone who hasnt run the race yet. Pass the baton on as fast and as well as you can and let them run their own race.

Gene Simmons, 2021

Welcome to this book!

Were going to have a lot of fun together, believe me, but were going to talk about some serious stuff, too. Im a happy guy and I like to think Im a funny one, toodont we all?but theres an angry man inside me, too.

I dont like that guy.

Say Im driving somewhere with my wife, Teresa, and some idiot cuts me off. Ill be instantly fucking raging and ready to kill that guy, and Ill start exhibiting all the signs of road rage. Thats when Teresa will say Frank! in that wife tone. All wives have that wife tone, and thank God they do. I used to fight it, and answer, What? but now I go, Youre right, because it makes no sense to get that angry. Wheres it going to get you? In trouble.