I am Michael Alago: Breathing Music, Signing Metallica, Beating Death by Michael Alago with Laura Davis-Chanin

Michael Alago is one of those guys who seems to be everywhere and know everyone. Growing up in New York in the 1970s, hanging out at CBGBs, then getting a job booking music acts at a club called the Ritz, leading to an A&R job with Elektra while still in his early 20s, set-up Alago to cross paths with a wide-swathe of the downtown New York art scene. But it wasn’t only his luck to be in the right place at the right time, it’s also clear that Michael’s passion for music and art, his generous spirit, his sense of adventure, ingratiated him to people who were eager to respond with help and encouragement. As a young fan he pushes himself backstage with confidence but meets his idols with true adoration that makes him welcome, not creepy. Some celebs get name-dropped: Liza Minelli, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen. Some are professional connections: Metallica, Rob Zombie. But he also seems to hardly have ever met anyone who didn’t then become a life-long friend: Nina Simone, Cyndi Lauper, Basquiat, Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith.

Reading his memoir is like meeting a fascinating stranger at a party and being entranced by the fabulous life stories they share one after another. I mean that in both a good and bad way.

In the good way his stories are always interesting and entertaining. Who wouldn’t want to hear about taking a bubble bath with Nina Simone, taking photos at Mapplethorpe’s grave with Patti Smith, watching Basquiat doodle in a composition book as he and Alago sit next to each other on the front steps of a building? I wish the book was better written, though. Like a guy spilling stories at a party, the book would benefit from a tighter structure, and the stories a better teller. Alago’s writing (or his dictation, if that’s the way it was done) is pretty pedestrian. His prose works to tell the story but doesn’t have much to add as writing. Worse, for some reason, Alago or his editor decided to interrupt Alago’s voice with a variety of other sources: short quotes from newspapers, poetry by Alago or others, information that seems to be quoted from encyclopedia entries. He even quotes himself now and then giving us a version of a story pulled from an old diary, rather than telling the story directly. The effect is to distance the stories from Alago’s own feelings and responses. I want to know what Alago thought about the concert or the album, not what the reviewer from Rolling Stone had to say, or how Alago experienced the scene, not how it was described in the newspaper the next day. Even more annoying, these short collage elements aren’t identified where they appear in the text, instead they’re linked to footnotes at the back, and this is not the kind of book where you want to be flipping back and forth tracking down a footnote.

The book weaves together three strands of Alago’s life. His music career, his life as a gay man including HIV/AIDS, and his story of addiction and recovery. The music career includes a big, early, success signing Metallica to Elektra. He specializes in Heavy Metal acts. Later he shepherds Nina Simone’s last album, Tracy Chapman’s first album, and a couple of albums with Cyndi Lauper. He also proudly describes several projects with artists that weren’t as well-known but were obviously satisfying to him, and interesting to read about.

As a gay man he seeks out anonymous sex on the New York piers, hustlers from Times Square, and pursues pen-pal relationships with a couple of guys in prison. (Typically, as he’s riding the bus to visit one of his pen-pals in prison, who should he sit next to but Sister Helen Prejean). He briefly mentions a couple of boyfriends but no long term partners. He tests HIV positive early in the 80s but fortunately remained asymptomatic until the early 90s. Although he describes a terrible experience with PCP pneumonia and toxoplasmosis he’s able to hang on long enough to get on the “cocktail” in ’95 and save his life.

The addiction and recovery stories resonated with me after having just finished Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart’s novel that includes an alcoholic character based on his mother. Alago’s addictions included alcohol but also cocaine and crack, maybe not so surprising for someone who had a career in the music business in the 70s and 80s. In the early 90s Alago dries out at Hazelden on Elektra’s dime. He keeps his sobriety for the rest of that decade, casually loses it for another decade and then gets sober again. Here his writing gets exactly the right tone, for me. He shares the ugliness of the worst episodes without dragging the book down in to the mess. And he describes his new-found sobriety with the same spirit of gratitude and affection for life that fills the rest of the book.

A highlight of the book is three sections of photos, black and white and color: fan photos of Alago backstage with his idols, album covers, candid shots of famous friends, and examples of Alago’s own photography of beefcake models. After he leaves the music biz in the late 90s (or the music biz left him when cds and record stores were replaced by streaming) Alago takes up a lifelong interest in photography and publishes a series of art books of male nudes and other photos.

I enjoyed the book very much. Though I haven’t lived anything like Alago’s life, his story parallels mine: we’re about the same age, gay, I’m a fan of many of the folks he tells stories about. And it’s a quick read.