D. H. Peligro - Dreadnaught: King of Afropunk

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Copyright 2013 by D. H. Peligro

FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL EDITION

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Printed in Canada
Set in Goudy Old Style
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Peligro, D. H.

Dreadnaught : king of Afropunk / D. H. Peligro.
p. cm.
ISBN 9781940207209

1. Peligro, D.H. 2. Dead Kennedys (Musical group). 3. Red Hot Chili Peppers (Musical group). 4. Punk rock musicians. 5. African American musicians Biography. 6. Punk rock music. 7. Rock musicians Drug use. I. Title.

ML3534 .P448 2013
781.66 dc23

This Book Is Dedicated To My Loving Family

Y ou hear a lot of stories in twelve-step meetingsshocking narratives of brutal childhoods, shattered families, hard falls from grace, harrowing descents into degradation, desperate time spent in detox, emergency rooms, psychiatric units, and jail cells. After awhile, you begin to think youve heard it all, that nothing will ever surprise you again about human behavior under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or about the human spirits ability to recover.

I thought I knew D. H. Peligros story. Sitting across the room from him most Monday nights for eight years, Id learned that he was a successful rock musician, the drummer for Dead Kennedys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose life and career had been derailed by the disease of addiction. Id heard how hed struggled for years to stay clean and sober, relapsing a number of times, undergoing multiple stints in rehab. Id seen him come back from the depths on at least two occasions, chastened by the experience, upset with himself, but always upbeat, never despairing, determined to really get it right this time.

That was the thing that most impressed me about D. H.however dark the places hed been, he still radiated joy, hope, and humor. You couldnt help but be drawn to the guy. I recently watched him captivate my thirteen-year-old daughter with a funny comment and a fist bump. It took all of five seconds. I saw the light in his eyes leap into hers. She had never heard his music, knew nothing about him, but she was instantly enchanted. Who is that guy? she asked me later. I didnt know you had any friends that cool.

I dont think I want her to read this book, at least not for a few years, or maybe ten. Because it turns out that I didnt know the half of D. H.s story. Dreadnaught contains such guts-out honesty and unflinchingly graphic description of the physical ravages of heroin addiction that, at times, it literally took my breath away, causing me to stop reading and walk around the room to shake it off. D. H. (for his birth name Darren Henley) was born and raised in St. Louis, which is also my hometown. But it was definitely a case of same city-different planets. His description of growing up in urban housing projects with a drunken stepfather who would wake him up in the middle of the night with a double-barreled shotgun pressed into his cheek and then force it into his mouth while screaming, Are you a man, now, Motherfucker? defies the comprehension of a white kid from the suburbs. How could that little boy NOT become a heroin addict?

Music saved him, giving him a ticket out of the craziness, but only temporarily. As he moved through the fascinating and disturbing world of West Coast punk music in the 1980s, running with the Peppers and the DKs as well as lesser known punk practitioners with names like The Dicks, the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles and the Slug Lords, D. H. constantly coupled career highs with personal lows, finding deeper and deeper bottoms to hit on his toboggan ride down into addiction, reaching a point where his body began sloughing off fist-sized chunks of flesh where he had repeatedly injected himself. He remembers laying in a hospital bed in a haze of drugs as a doctor on his morning rounds matter-of-factly told an entourage of medical students: This is Mr. Henley, thirty-four-year-old African American who has whats known as a shooters abscess. We extracted approximately a liter of puss from his left thigh. Next to Dreadnaught , a typical episode of Behind the Music seems like My Little Pony .

At the same time, however, the Dreadnaught narrative is infused with wry humor of a man who appreciates the ironic ridiculousness of shooting heroin into abscesses in his butt while complaining about the food served in rehab: I cant eat this! Im a vegetarian!

Its the D. H. I know who relates the story of the scary ex-con in yet another rehab (his twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth) who asks rhetorically, You know how you rape a guy in prison? and then proceeds to list the steps, employing the prison expression grippins to describe the sphincter muscle. D. H. instinctively processes the mans story emotionally by writing an old time-y blues song titled Grippins to the Grave, thereby transforming a truly horrific mental image into something genuinely funny. I would not have thought it possible if I hadnt read it. Writers this good rarely play drums so well

As the author of nonfiction books, I confess there were times when I was reading Dreadnaught that I envied D. H. for having such a rich, colorful true story to tell. But I am grateful I didnt have to live that story, because Im fairly certain I would not have survived it. From now on, whenever I see D. H., I will always marvel that he is alive and that his sense humor and sweet nature have somehow survived as well.

If you dont believe in miracles, this book may change your mind.

I m in L.A. County Hospital, and its a nightmare. Ive spent four days shivering and sweating in the emergency room before being taken into the examining room. I was obviously a strung out mess, but guys with knife and gunshot wounds were rushed in ahead of me. I clutched a bottle of Valium that I had stashed away. A nurse came out once to check on me and tried to take it, but I yelled and we had a tug of war. I hollered and wouldnt let go. I was too much trouble so she got fed up and left. She didnt come back.

I was constantly shifted around various hallways and corridors for four days. Sweaty, dirty, and bloody, I sat in the rancid air of that emergency room feeling the cloud of death around me. A suffocating death was inside of me, too.