To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am'.
Forest Hills was a middle-class neighborhood filled with snobby rich people and their screaming brats.
When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.
When I was hitching, I'd be completely decked out. I used to wear this custom-made black jumpsuit, these, like, pink, knee-high platform boots, all kinds of rhinestones, lots of dangling belts and gloves.
They asked me to sing - actually, it was Dee Dee, because he had seen me in Sniper and thought I wasn't like anybody else. Everybody else was doing an Iggy or a Mick Jagger.
I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.