Chapter 2: The Tunis Years

So our posting in London, England ended in 1980 and we went back to Ottawa, Canada but that was very short lived. I was briefly enrolled in the Pinecrest Elementary public school (egad) in Ottawa for about a few months; sure enough, we found out shortly after that we were being posted to the exotic north African country called Tunisia.  I had never heard of Tunis nor Tunisia to be honest.  Was not a country on my radar.  But boy was my life about to change, big time.

My real journey of music discovery happened while living on top of the Canadian Embassy in Tunis.  If I recall correctly, the first 3 floors were the embassy; the rest of the floors were large sized apartments housing various Embassy staff.  I think we lived on the 4th floor and my Dad’s friend & colleague Linda Gagne lived on top of us. Linda Gagne was an avid vinyl collector and I recall the excitement upon discovering her epic record collection.  We used to hang out at her place quite a bit; my Dad and Linda would kick back while I was able to try out hundreds of her records; a pivotal moment was discovering Kiss Dynasty…..the first time I heard “I was made for loving you” I was hooked.  I also remember being struck by the album cover of Alice Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies”.  My love of hard rock had begun.  My love of Kiss quickly traversed to ACDC; pretty sure it was either Highway to Hell or Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap that really blew my mind.  I was completely hooked on ACDC and devoured every single little thing I could find on them which wasn’t easy living in Tunisia.

Living in Tunis in the early 80’s was like being cut off from the rest of the world.  I recall one TV channel, which was of the Imam preying for what seemed like constantly LOL.  Luckily, our house in La Marsa (quaint suburb of Tunis) was right on the beach and we were so close to Sicily we would often get Italian transmissions of RAI I, II and III (Italian equivalent of BBC I, II and III in England) which was great; being half Italian, and spending my summers with my Italian grandparents in Italy, I spoke Italian very well (I can say 90% fluent) and understood the TV channels very well.  But when it came to music, especially pop & rock, my only link to the outside world was a German magazine that was stocked in my local corner store; the magazine was called “Pop rocky”.  I still remember the logo; here was an example of how it looked like:

This magazine literally was my life, and I am not kidding.  I would anxiously await each new edition.  I did not speak or read a word of German, and it was extremely frustrating to be yearning for any news or information about my favorite rock bands (Kiss, ACDC, Iron Maiden & Judas Priest).  Actually come to think of it, I had a huge crush on Kim Wilde and when I hard the song “Kids in America” I flipped out; that song really rocked my world.  Made a huge impression on me.  Anyhow, I digress.  This magazine was my only link to the music world outside; so, as a result, I only read about bands that were big in Europe at the time; not artists like Kim Mitchell, The Guess Who, etc.

My two best friends who went to my school (American School in Tunis, a.k.a, “ACST”) were both Swedish; Lars Danielson and Stefan Ljunberg: They being Swedish both loved Abba as did I, and I remember watching Abba Betamax videos in Lars’ house.  We all shared our love of hard rock, particularly Kiss and ACDC and Iron Maiden.  When one of us would go back to our native countries to visit our family for holidays, we would bring back the latest cassettes or records and would be hailed as heroes in the process for bringing back such hard to get material; remember, this is a third world country and the tapes you that you did find were always bootlegged versions with crappy recordings.  I remember snagging a bootlegged version of Judas Priest – British Steel in the local souks (market) and was thrilled; I loved that album!

This is the view from my porch in Tunis; you can see the Mediterranean sea in the distance:

This is me rockin’ an ACDC tshirt, I think was around 10 or 11 here:

We honestly lived and breathed hard rock and heavy metal.  It’s all we talked about anyways.  I still remember with crystal clear memory seeing my first MTV video; it was recorded of course on VHS and brought in by one of the Americans at my school.  I remember it was ACDC (of all bands, it was my favorite band at the time !!!!) and the video was “Put the finger on you”; MTV blew my socks off.  It was the coolest things I had ever seen.  It was like seeing the internet for the first time…mind blowing !!!!!  Once MTV hit, we would anxiously await for friends of friends to bring back recorded MTV content so that we could sit and absorb it all….so much fun.  Pure fun…no drugs or alcohol (yet) LOL.

My life changed for ever when one day my Dad saw me rocking out to ACDC playing “faux guitar” with a tennis racket; he said “why don’t you just get a real guitar”?  So I did. My Mom was living in London, England at the time (my parents divorced in ’76 when we first moved to England) so I went to visit her on one of the yearly school holidays and she bought me my first guitar; it was a total piece of crap acoustic, steel strings; don’t recall the brand but would do anything to have that guitar now.  I remember the strings were really far off the neck and it was just horrible to play, but I loved it and eventually figured out some chords.  My love of gear had begun.