Sonny Outlook

"I figured if anybody can make the guitar loud, it's Ron Asheton," Vincent says of the disc. "We did part of the record in Detroit, and we got the record company to spring for a plane ticket for Captain Sensible. Because that's who I wanted as a bass player."

Vincent has seen many of his peers expire, pals from his days in the Testors.

"I'm sad that a lot of the guys are gone 'cause I would have liked to work with some of them. And they were pretty cool people, like Stiv and Thunders and guys like that. It would have been some cool collaborations around now. But it didn't work out."

He claims to be off the dope, off everything but the occasional beer and joint.

"Now, I'm drinking a little bit, you know, a beer after the show. Sometimes if we are doing a show and it's really intense and high-energy and stuff, I'll smoke a whole joint with like hash in it to come down, you know. But I wouldn't do that in Texas, for example. But if I do that in Europe, they don't care about that as much."

Without sounding maudlin, rock 'n' roll can be hard. So hard at times to just keep your head above water, to gasp for that breath, to keep that belief. If anybody understands this, it's Vincent.

He relates an episode where he had to travel from Munich to Holland after a recording session that paid him $100. The money was needed to pay off a phone bill for those who were putting him up. He missed his train connection.

"I got stuck, but I was kind of close to the border. If I would've taken a hotel, the money I just made would have been gone. Same with a taxi. So I went out to the Autobahn. But people just don't hitchhike on the Autobahn. And here I am . . . I was all in black clothes and Beatle boots, I had my gig box and my guitar, and these huge trucks are going by me in the middle of the night. Nobody could even see me. I saw this sign that said 19 kilometers to the border and I thought, 'Oh, I could walk that.'

". . . By the time I got to my destination, I was pissed off at the whole world . . . most people in my situation and at my age could have just whipped out their gold cards and stayed at a hotel and just resolved the situation. They wouldn't have even been in the situation to begin with. I just [thought], 'Hey, man, I did it all. I gave my blood, my heart, my soul, and here I am fuckin' hitchhiking down a fuckin' wacky German Autobahn.' I just figured it was the time to quit."

When he got to a phone, he called up Wayne Kramer, a man who would often refer to Vincent as his protégé. Kramer gave the younger Vincent a pep talk.

"He was going, 'It's the music, man, it's all the music.' He just said, 'Don't worry about the rest of this shit.' Ever since then, I've been surfing on that little pep talk."