Steven Page 471
"Four years into his sobriety, I wanted to write with Richie [Supa] again because I remembered what good stuff we got with "Chip Away The Stone." But Tim and Joe Perry kept us apart, Joe from jealousy and Tim from his over cautious, mother-hen controlling thing where he was afraid that Steven and Richie, the two worst drug addicts anyone has ever known, were gonna get back into dope together.
But Richie was sober and we did get together [in the summer of 1991]. When he came out of jail, he had nothing. The IRS had taken everything. I got him a keyboard and Joe gave him a guitar to help jump-start his creative juices. One day he called me up to thank me. We got into war stories--the old days-- and got so deep I could literally taste the coke in my mouth. My heart started pounding. We talked about what it feels like to shoot a load in your arm. Heroin is so hard to kick because you start to think about it and you get what's called "euphoric recall."
I said, "Richie, a lot of people were afraid of us getting together because they thought we'd start using again. And now--look at this. Were fuckin' sober. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it amazing?"
And he says, "Yeah, I was at this meeting the other day and this black woman says, 'I kept the right ones out and let the wrong ones in.'"
I said automatically, "Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins."
That's how we wrote "Amazing" in four hours at my house in Boston, right at the beginning of the whole process that became Get A Grip.
