For more than 15 years, Steven Stefanakos — affectionately known to many Guided by Voices fans as “GBVPD” — has been a dear associate of Robert Pollard and a steady presence within the band’s extended inner circle.
With his fretful voiceover at the top of “Packing the Dead Zone,” from 2017’s August By Cake — “We’re creating a society of cell-phone-crazed, marijuana-smoking zombies!” — he incontrovertibly put his stamp on the GBV catalog.
Stefanakos is an NYPD officer, a veteran member of the department’s Emergency Service Unit, and a 9/11 first responder, with more than three decades spent in emergency response and tactical operations.
In the following interview, Stefanakos traces his path into law enforcement, his discovery of Guided by Voices, and the sequence of events that led from fandom to direct involvement.
This includes a detailed, firsthand account of 9/11, and the essential role Pollard’s music — especially “The Official Ironmen Rally Song” — has played in his life since.
Officer Steve. How are you, man?
I’m damn good, brother. Everything always goes pretty damn good for me. We’re blessed over here.
You’re on Long Island, yeah?
Yeah, I live in Massapequa Park on Long Island. Born and raised Long Island kid — all my life here. It’s all I know.
We’ve known each other for a while, but I don’t know anything about your early life.
I was born in ‘67 and grew up in Woodmere — what’s known as the Five Towns. The thing about living where I live is that New York City is right over the border. So, Nassau County, where I grew up — you have Queens, and then right into Manhattan. That was one of the coolest things ever, logistically or geographically.
I had an awesome childhood. I have an older brother and older sister. My father started and owned a really large florist out here — but when you say florist, people think about walking into your flower shop and buying flowers. That was a small part of his business. His business was huge weddings, corporate events, bar and bat mitzvahs, you name it.
That was the basis of his business, and he grew it to, at one point, having over 125 people working for him. I mean, it was huge.
And what was interesting for me, growing up in all of that, is that I was exposed at an extremely early age to every single type of person that ever walked the planet — black, white, Latino, European. He had the entire United Nations working for him at one point.
They actually called me “the clone,” because they thought I was just like him. Being a little kid, it formed such an amazing foundation of everything from different types of food to music to culture.
During the summers, I would go work with my father, brother, and sister. At an early age — and I was probably more of a hindrance there — they’d send me out on deliveries with one of the guys. Or they would send me to do a wedding at one of the big event halls in the metropolitan area.
I’m still friends with all the people I grew up with. It was typical: baseball, hockey — we were outside all the time. Video games and stuff came much, much later on. You were out from sun up ‘til sun down. It was awesome.
High school was awesome. I had a great high school [George W. Hewlett High School in Hewlett, NY]. I had a great group of friends. We didn’t have subdivisions — the jocks, the greasers.
If I wasn’t at work with my father or brother or whatever, we’d be doing our typical shit on Friday, Saturday nights. None of us ever got into any real trouble. It wasn’t like that. We just had a lot of fun.
How did you first get into music?
My sister’s 11 years older than me; my brother’s nine years older than me. I credit my sister with really giving me a love of music.
Of course, there were the Beatles, and that was probably my first love. I can’t listen to them now — I find them more boring than anything — but that’s because it was rammed down my throat. It wasn’t mine, even though I love them. But the Who, Hall and Oates — I don’t like Hall and Oates, but I’m saying this is the stuff she was listening to. Elton John, Pink Floyd.
My brother was a huge Allman Brothers fan. Still is. And I tell you — I’ve seen the Allman Brothers a bunch of times. That’s his love, not mine.
I remember when I went to my first Allman Brothers show at Jones Beach here on Long Island — which is an awesome venue to see a show — and then I saw them shortly thereafter.
It was like [wearily] OK, here we go. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” and here comes this jam. It was great because Dicky Betts was still in the band — and Greg Allman, of course, and Jaimoe. But it was the same thing over and over again. And I remember hearing Frampton Comes Alive from my brother’s room over and over and over again.
But my sister was totally more diverse — that stuff coming out of the ‘60s into the ‘70s. She was all over the place. My earliest musical memories are from them, but I always ventured closer to my sister.
My parents loved the classics. My father was a huge Sinatra fan. There was a show here called Saturday with Sinatra, and I remember it was 24 hours every Saturday of Sinatra. I was like, It’s the same shit once again!
My mother loved Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, Sinatra, of course. All these classic crooner type singers from that era. I remember listening to Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” on eight-track in the car.
Were you more like your dad or your mom?
Probably a little more like my dad. I don’t know. That’s a good question. I think I have the best of both of them.
My dad was 92 when he passed away. Like I said, he built his business, but he basically worked every single [second] until he passed away. He had no hobbies. His business was everything to him. He was a guy that would work 20 hours a day. Even when he was at his most successful height, he always worked his ass off.
He came from immigrant parents. My grandparents, both sets, were born over in Greece. They just wanted that American dream. They wanted to be American. And when they came here, they assimilated. So, if you walked into their house, as far as cultural stuff, you wouldn’t know they were Greek or whatever. They were American. That’s what they wanted to be.
My father told me stories from when he was 14, 15 years old — he would never be in school. He’d always be working. From the stories we were told, the teachers would pass him just so he wouldn’t be in class because he was disruptive.
But he was always working. He got caught driving a truck at 14 years old for a chicken delivery place — live poultry back then, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My father grew up in Manhattan, and my mother in Queens.
My father’s side was extremely excitable people. A lot of fun being around them. Every holiday was always noisy — there was something going on, maybe even an argument amongst cousins and stuff. Being a little kid, seeing all this, you think, This is how every family is. And then you go to your friend’s house, and you’re like, These people are pretty calm.
How was life after high school? What did you study as an undergrad?
I graduated high school in 1985, went to the University of Hartford, and then finished up on Long Island here at C.W. Post. I did two years up at Hartford, played rugby up there for the rugby team — still friends with all those guys still.
I was a communications major, and then my major ended up being journalism. I think I even told you a while ago that I was a journalism major — both writing and broadcast journalism — but I never really got into it.
I graduated with a BFA, which is 129 credits as opposed to your 120 credits. Back then, you could put those nine credits toward your master’s, which I never did. You know how you’re supposed to cruise through college your last semester? Well, I didn’t know that.
So, I go to my advisor, and she’s like, You still owe however many credits, but you could do it over the summer. I was like, “No fucking way.”
My last semester ended up being, like, five or six classes to get those extra nine credits up, and I was like, “I am not coming. You people don’t understand. I’m going four years and not a day more, and I’m never coming back to this campus ever again.” And that’s basically what happened. I busted my ass. I got that done.
Like I said, I had the best time in college. It was a great four years. And then when I graduated in May of ‘89, I went to work for New York magazine that July or August. I realized very quickly that I never wanted to wear a suit and tie, and I never wanted to take the train into Manhattan ever again. Totally not my thing.
My father still had his business. It’s still there. My brother and sister run it now.
What was it like to work there?
Don’t get me wrong; it was a successful business. It provided a tremendous living for my family. My father, being the workaholic that he was — that was his way of taking care of us. By working his ass off and showing that nothing is ever given to anybody, and nothing was ever given to him. He worked 20 hours a day, and if you were one of his kids, you had to work 23 hours a day.
There was no complaining about hard work. Hard work was awesome. That’s where I got my basis of a work ethic.
It was a 365-day-a-year thing — Monday through Sunday, and Monday starts all over again. Flowers came in on Monday and Tuesday, and you had to clean up all your stuff from the parties over the weekend. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, they were getting stuff ready for the big parties.
Then Friday would come. You’d start delivering your equipment to the places that you were exclusive to. And then Saturday, Sunday, you were in there doing your weddings or bar mitzvahs or corporate events.
It was like being a roadie. You would have to stay until after the affair and break it down — unless you had a Sunday morning affair, then you didn’t have to, because your equipment was already there; just change it over. They did amazing things, huge displays; they had a full display art department. They were really on the cutting edge.
It was huge, that undertaking. Like I said, your weekends were spent working your ass off. My thing was, if I didn’t have to stay over, I’d finish working at 11, 12 o’clock at night, and then I’d meet up with my friends and be out until three, four in the morning — then, gotta be up early Sunday morning to go back to work.
Like I told you, I had the United Nations with me, so [you can imagine] the types of music I was listening to from an early age. I learned all about soul when I was five, six years old — Wilson Pickett, Smokey Robinson, all the Motown stuff.
My father had maybe five or six guys that came over from Jamaica working for us. Everybody knows and loves Bob Marley — and he was a huge part of it, don’t get me wrong — but I was listening to the early stuff by Leslie Kong, Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown, and Burning Spear.
Then punk comes into it, and I became a huge Clash fan at 10 years old in 1977, when that first Clash album came out. They were bringing reggae into it, and I’m like, Holy shit. I know this! I consider the Clash my first band that was my own, up to that point.
I remember being in fifth to sixth grade and listening to Kiss and all that with my friends, and that was cool. But when the Clash came out, my head exploded off my shoulders. You could not compare anything to that first punk movement. To me, that was mine. That was my own.
My brother’s friend, a guy named Bobby G. — who I’m still friends with today — is about 12 years older than me. He’s the one who got me into Elvis Costello, the Damned, that slow transfer from post-punk into new wave that was happening. And, of course, MTV was big, starting up.
So, it was an exciting time in music, because it was going into areas that had never, ever, ever been explored before.
Music clearly drew you from the beginning. But I haven’t heard anything specifically drawing you to law enforcement.
So, I graduate college [in 1989]. They started me at New York magazine in the circulation department, which I knew nothing about. I thought I was going to be this next big writer.
And don’t get me wrong: I know you have to start somewhere and work your way up to it. But, circulation — like, I had to sit on a computer screen and just put numbers in. I had no fucking idea; I didn’t know anything about computers. I had no interest in it. I still have no interest in it. I could barely sign on to talk to you.
So, I quit after two weeks. I didn’t want to work there. They owned maybe 11 magazines under their umbrella, so it wasn’t just New York magazine; you had this big thing. I remember when I quit, the supervisor was like, “Do you realize the opportunity that was afforded to you? This is New York magazine.” I’m like, "OK, see you later.”
I kind of questioned myself for a second: Am I making the right move? It was too late at that point. I wasn’t going to walk back in there and say [bashfully] “Can I have my job back?” No, I was committed that I was gone.
I started working for a family friend. He had a construction business installing fire sprinkler systems, so I learned how to cut pipe. You would install these systems in big warehouses and stuff like that.
But that wasn’t my thing either. I knew it was going to be a transitional thing. I had this degree in journalism, and I didn’t want to go back to work for the family business. I also realized that I would probably get along better with everyone in my family if I didn’t work there. Working in a family business is a tough thing, and I’m really close with my brother, sister, and parents.
I still had nothing that I felt that I could do on my own. And a buddy of mine I grew up with, who was a cop, said, “Why don’t you take the police test? You’ve got a four-year degree, and you need a four-year degree to advance up the ranks. Take the test. See what happens.”
I was like, “Yeah, that sounds cool.” It’s not, like, real work, you know — you don’t have deadlines to worry about and number-crunching and shit like that. So, I took the test — and I think I scored 98 on it or something like that.
A few months later, I got a packet and a call from the investigators from the NYPD. They called me in. I had to go down to Applicant Investigations in Jamaica, Queens, where I met with my investigator. He handed me a stack of stuff — nothing computerized back then — and he was like, “Fill this out and bring it back on this date.”
So, I fill all the stuff out, and it was copies of your high school diploma, your transcript, your college stuff, Have you ever been in trouble before? Filling out permission for background checks, and so on and so forth.
Next thing you know, I get a phone call asking if I was interested in being hired for the New York City Police Department. I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely.”
Then, I had to go there, and I remember I was number 2002 on the list. A huge, long line. We were all waitlisted, and if we didn’t get cut, we would be in the next academy class. They told us to stay by our phones, because we’d probably get a call — people along the way dropped out, and so on and so forth.
I remember it was Tuesday or Wednesday, and I was sitting around the house, waiting for a phone call, thinking, This sucks. It was terrible. Finally, on Friday night, I said, Fuck this. I’m going out with my friends.
We went out, and then my mother beeped me. We had beepers. It was, like, 11 o’clock at night, and she was like, “The NYPD called.” So, I called the number, and the guy goes, “Yo, if you want to be hired, you’ve gotta be here before midnight.”
So I went down to Jamaica Avenue, signed the paperwork, and started at the academy that Monday. I was hired April 30 and started May 3. I remember that because May 3 was also my mother’s birthday.
How was police academy?
I had a great time. It was on 20th Street in Manhattan. There were, I think, 2,300 people hired in my class, and then we were broken up into smaller companies of about 30 people.
The rotation was a week of day tours, which is seven in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. You did five of those, you had two days off, and then you did five night tours, which was 3:15 to 11:50. Three days off. Five and two, five and three, five and two, five and three. And that was for six months.
Going from an academic setting of college into six months at the police academy — to me, it was easy. Once again, what I loved about it was being surrounded by so many different types of people in my academy company.
Then, the serious side of policing comes up. You’re sitting in an auditorium for a lecture or something, and the subjects were law, social science, police science, and the gym. In the gym, you learn speed-cuffing and all the things that make up the physicality of being a police officer.
Then there was the academic side. You had to learn the law. You had to learn social science — the people you’re policing, the different communities in New York City.
And this is where things started to become a little serious. You could be sitting in a lecture, and someone tells you: “Look around this room. Hopefully it never happens, but somebody may not make it. You may be killed. There’s a chance you can be killed in the line of duty. We’re talking about life-and-death situations.”
You look at the maturity level of yourself. I think I was 22, 23 when I got hired. Some of these people that I hired with were 20 years old. As long as you were 21 when you graduated the academy, you were good. You had that blanket of protection being in that building, and now you’re on the streets.
What were your early experiences on the force like?
I was first assigned to the Rockaways, in the housing division. Everything I dealt with was in the projects. I would see hard-working people, just in more impoverished areas. The Rockaways was like the land that time forgot.
Then I went up to Long Island City for a little while. And then from there I went to the Emergency Service Unit, where I still am after 31 years. I love every single day of it.
The Emergency Service Unit is a real special place in the NYPD. For lack of better terminology, we’re a tactical team. We’re the SWAT team for New York City. We do all the dignitary protection. So, anytime there’s any type of foreign head of state — the president of the United States — we’re on their protection details.
We handle all the high-risk warrants for New York City. We deal with all the barricaded perpetrators and emotionally disturbed persons — whether they’re on the street or looking to jump off any type of structure. Things like that.
We do a whole bunch of other stuff as well. We’re all certified divers. We’re all emergency medical technicians. The saying is — and it’s an old saying — when the public needs help, they call the police. When the police need help, they call the Emergency Service Unit.
And we’ll be there. We will assist precinct and patrol on any type of situation, from the mundane — possibly getting a locked child out of a car, or animal jobs, because we do carry tranquilizers — to dealing with disturbed people. People in complete crisis. Things like that. Those assignments — that’s where my passion is.
Seems like your public-spiritedness evolved with the job.
Absolutely, 100%. You’re on the money. It organically developed.
You know, Joe Strummer said — and this is one of those things that always resonated with me — that we’re all in this thing together. And, you know, as divided as we’ve become — and I will not talk politics with anybody — we’re still all in this together, you know. And I hate where we’re going, but that’s a whole different story. We could talk about that for years.
What has your time on the force taught you about the human condition?
When people don’t come from a good family structure — that nurturing concept — they become much rougher. They become much edgier. They don’t have that morality, or the ability to really understand the totality of certain circumstances.
You know, if you look at homicides and things like that — that’s the ultimate act of evil. “Demons Are Real,” you know. And when society breaks down and that lawlessness happens, that means that people just don’t care anymore.
When you have people that doesn’t care about anything, they don’t give a shit about going to jail — “I’ll do 20, 30 years,” whatever — those the most dangerous people around you.
Now, I’m going to give you the flip-side of that. It’s a small percentage. It’s not the norm. Even people that have grown up in some of the hardest areas of New York City, or in the world — so many good people come out of that. That’s the majority: hard-working people that want to make better lives for themselves.
But when you get to that point where, like I said, people get hurt in the process — that’s not good. That’s where things really fall apart.
I know you’ve witnessed things you’ll never forget — and not in a good way.
I think I’ve been very lucky. You have to separate events from your professional life and your personal life.
Not everybody can do that. Some people do it much better than others, and I work with some of the greatest cops in the world; they’re pretty good at that. Because, once again, it’s work, and then your personal life. It’s almost like being part of something bigger every single day, and then going back to boring. I like to keep my life boring.
And, don’t get me wrong: there are times when you’re like, Holy shit, that was fucked up. But the people that you have around you are your best psychologists — your best support group. They’re the people that, when things get bad, you talk to, and you get through it. They know what you’re going through, because they’ve been through a lot of it.
I had been established in the Emergency Service Unit for five or six years when I met my wife, so this is all she’s known — this side of me, my professional life. Even though we grew up in the same area, we ran in the same circles at different times, so we didn’t meet each other until later on.
How did you get into Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices?
It’s a similar story that I’ve seen from other fans and stuff. In 1994, there was a place on Saint Mark’s Place in Manhattan called Sounds. It was a record store — more CDs back then, because the vinyl revolution hadn’t come back.
You’d been a cop for a while at that point.
Three or four years. My friends who I grew up with were also big music people — we had gone to so many shows together at that point. I’ve seen just about everybody, numerous times.
But we used to go CD shopping there, and then go around the corner to McSorley’s, and that’s where we’d end up for the night — take the train back to Long Island and end up somewhere out here.
I’ll never forget it: in June or July 1994, I walked into Sounds, and “Expecting Brainchild” was just starting. “Bob, would you and Living Praise Choir lead us in ‘To God Be the Glory’?” And then [imitates opening riff]. I was like, What the…? What is that? So I went up to the front and said, “What is this?”
[The guy at the register] is like, “Oh, this is the new Guided by Voices.” It was [1993’s] Vampire on Titus. I had heard about Guided by Voices — there was a buzz around New York City about them — but I had never heard Guided by Voices. I kept hearing about them in The Village Voice, but I didn’t know anything.
So, I said to the guy, “Where is this?” "He’s like, “This is the only copy. It’s mine.” I said, “How much?” He’s like, “20 bucks.” I’m like, “You got it.” And back then, $20 for a CD that was going for seven bucks was probably a big deal.
I get the CD. I get a bunch of other stuff. We go to McSorley’s. The next day is Saturday. I may have had a little bit of a hangover, and I’m in my apartment, and I go, Oh, let me go through some of the stuff I bought.
I put on Vampire on Titus from the beginning — “‘Wished I Was a Giant’” — and I’m like, “This is the greatest fucking song I’ve ever heard in my life.”
You couldn’t make out the lyrics. You couldn’t make out what was being said. The cover was so cool — that bright yellow, [the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary]. And on the back, there’s Bob chugging a beer and Randy Campbell behind him.
Well, I didn’t know this, but when Scat put those out, [1992’s] Propeller was attached to it. So, all of a sudden, Vampire on Titus finishes and it goes into Propeller. I’m like, Oh, shit. What the fuck? This is the fucking greatest thing I’ve ever heard.
Vampire, to this day, remains my favorite album, because of what it brought me. It brought me into this world. There was feedback going on — doors opening and creaking.
The Clash had broken up in 1983, so I went through a period of time where I kind of got lost [with music]. Music was good, but it wasn’t great. The whole Americana thing — Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt — that was great. Dave Alvin from the Blasters came out with some amazing stuff. But I kind of couldn’t find my own thing.
I was still going to shows. God, I remember going to a shitload of blues shows in those years. There was a place called Manny’s Car Wash in Manhattan, a place called Terra Blues on Bleecker Street. I’d seen Buddy Guy, all this shit going on.
But I was looking for something, and this was it. This was the answer. And then, Wait a minute! They have other albums I didn’t know about! [1986’s] Forever Since Breakfast and stuff.
But they were different. If you listen to Vampire on Titus, you can see there’s something going on there that would lead to Propeller, then Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and Under the Bushes Under the Stars.
Guided by Voices became everything to me at that moment. I went to see them open for Pavement at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1994. There’s a lot [laughs] I don’t remember of the show, but I just remember it being fucking amazing. I wasn’t a huge Pavement fan at all. I went to see Guided by Voices, I saw Guided by Voices, and I left.
Whenever Guided by Voices came to NYC, I made sure to see them. I think I missed one or two due to work. They played Tramps, which is a great club in Manhattan; I got to see them there.
And then, in ‘97, ‘98, they played a Central Park festival — the Cobra Verde, Guided by Verde lineup. I didn’t even realize that Bob had made some changes to the lineup. I was like, Who are they? Who’s this?
Some of the people in the audience were like, “Some of the guys left,” and so on and so forth. I didn’t really know why. The internet wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t like I could go on a message board, like, “What did I just see?”
I got to see them at Irving Plaza one of the nights of the Electrifying Conclusion tour; I don’t remember when I went to the first or the second. It was a Friday–Saturday deal. I know I was sick as hell; I had the flu. But there was no way I was going to miss it.
And then Guided by Voices ended after that. But you look at what Bob had done — all the solo stuff started coming out, absolutely fucking amazing. All the Circus Devils stuff. All the early stuff that I started to really get my hands on, Hazzard Hotrods, Acid Ranch, Boston Spaceships.
And I loved it. There’s nothing better to me.
In November 2010, they played Terminal 5. I remember being right in front of Mitch Mitchell, maybe two or three deep. I was more mesmerized than I was at the earlier show. It was, Here these guys are. And it was mythical to me. Still is, to this point. I remember Rich T. bringing out the setlist, and the cooler coming out. Unreal, unreal — just everything.
I had become friends with Mitch, who I love, and we hooked up once again when they played McCarren Park [in Brooklyn, in 2011].
I remember John Norris from MTV was there. Courtney Love was in and out of the area. All these New York City music people — real music people — were there. I was there with a couple of friends of mine.
I’m not a big eavesdropper — but you listen to the conversations going on around you, and the excitement about Guided by Voices being back was everything I needed it to be.
I got to hang with Mitch after the show, and briefly, briefly, briefly meet Bob. He probably wouldn’t even remember that. Of course, I did. And being that little kid, like in A Christmas Story — you’re getting up to meet Santa, and you don’t know what to say.
I’m a big fan of lyric writing. That comes back to that journalism thing. I had studied Bob’s lyrics for years, and I always remembered that if I ever got to meet him and spend some time with him, I’d love to ask him, “What do you mean by this? What do you mean by that?” Of course, I didn’t do it.
It was a brief introduction. Shook hands, got to meet Toby [Sprout], Greg [Demos], Kevin Fennell. And then Mitch and I went off to bullshit and hang out. I was riding a high. It was amazing.
Shortly thereafter, a couple of months later, I get a phone call from Mitch, and he’s like, “Yo, what are you doing January 3?” This was five or six months out. He goes, “We’re gonna be on Letterman. You want to come?”
I was like [sputtering] “Wait, wait, what? Do I want to…? What do you mean?”
The day before, I did a midnight, stayed at work for a couple of hours, got some rest, and I remember I had to meet them at, like, two o’clock at the side door to Ed Sullivan Theater.
Here I am thinking, like, This is the stage that the Beatles played. One of Bob’s all-time favorites. And now I’m going to get to see Guided by Voices at the Ed Sullivan Theater for David Letterman.
I go into the side door. I had just missed them. I go into the side entrance, and the security guard has a list. I go, “Steve Stefanakos.” “Oh, here you go.” She hands me this pass: “Steve Stefanakos: Guided by Voices.” I’m like, What the fuck is this?
And she’s staring at me, and I’m like, “Where do I go?” She’s like, “Oh, you can go wherever you want. You just can’t go on the fourth or fifth floor.” That’s where Letterman had his offices and his staff. She’s like, “Oh, go down to the green room.” Like, Where is that? She thought I was in the band. I was with the band, but I wasn’t in the band.
I went down to the room, and I was the only person there. I’m looking around, like, This is absolutely fucking bizarre. A little sign on the door — “Guided by Voices” — and I’m here first. I didn’t want to be the only person in this room, and for people to start coming in that don’t know me: Who is this dude?
Mitch comes in first — huge hug — and we just get to catching up. A few minutes later, Toby was there with his family. Kevin, Greg, and Rosie, and then Bob and Sarah came in. Bob knew who I was right away. He came over, gave me a hug, and that was it. Our friendship from that point has been so fucking solid.
But it’s all because of Mitch Mitchell and the friendship that I had forged with him. Mitch is one of the most real people you could ever meet. He’s everything you think Mitch Mitchell is.
Can you tell perhaps your most important GBV story, from a decade prior?
The morning of September 11 was a Tuesday. You had Monday Night Football the night before. I lived with my wife and my oldest son, who was six months old at the time, in Lawrence, Nassau County. We lived in a third-floor apartment that had a clear view of the Twin Towers on the skyline of lower Manhattan.
On the morning of September 11, it was gorgeous out — clear as hell. I was driving to work in Flushing, where my quarters are for the squad that I work in, and I had Under the Bushes Under the Stars on cassette. I probably got to work at 6:50. It was very congested where we parked our cars, but I got lucky and got a parking spot right away, which was a huge deal.
So, I was like, Oh, it’s going to be a great day. And I turned my car off with the tape still playing “The Official Ironmen Rally Song.”
The day started at seven o’clock in the morning. There were six of us. The seventh guy went to Brooklyn because they were short there. That’s how we compensated the manpower. Like I said, we’re a city-wide unit.
My sergeant, Paul Hargrove, had to run out and do an errand. And Tommy Langone and Paul Talty had to run to Queens College because Paul’s wife was just starting her master’s for her teaching degree, so he needed to get her a textbook. So, they run out.
And, 8:46 — the first transmission of a plane that hit the first tower.
So, myself and my partner jump in our truck, and we turn on a roadway that goes from Flushing into Elmhurst, Queens. When you come over that bridge, you have a full view of the New York City skyline. I thought it was a regular, small Cessna — as terrible as it would be, maybe just a small air accident. We had no idea it was a commercial liner.
We took the Grand Central Parkway in Astoria, got off at 31st Street, went to 21st Street, and you could take 21st Street right across Long Island City into the Queens–Midtown Tunnel. A fire truck was going into the tunnel before us. I said to my partner, Rich Winwood, who was driving: “I hope you don’t get stuck behind this fire truck. Because if you do, and something happens, and we get stuck in the tunnel, we’re screwed.”
We make it through the tunnel, and as we’re coming out the other side, that’s when the second plane hits. So now, we know what’s going on. One of the radio transmissions comes on: “Notify the Pentagon and the White House that we’re under attack.”
All emergency service units responded to a post office building near the Trade Center complex. We get out, and the chief of the department comes up to me and my partner and goes, “Guys, there’s a third plane coming into our airspace. We just don’t know what it is.”
And your asshole starts to pucker, because now we heard it — and it ended up being the Air National Guard coming from Massachusetts. But we didn’t know that at that second. And then we saw the F-14s coming over New York City. It was unreal — like, Holy shit.
But at the same time, all air traffic had stopped around New York City, so you didn’t know what it was going to be. Was it going to be friendly, or was it not going to be friendly? So, thank god it was them.
Then, our assignments got handed out — what we were going to do. Originally, myself and my partner, Rich Winwood, were going to be assigned to Tower 2, to Sergeant John Coughlin’s team.
It just so happened that Tommy Langone and Paul Talty, the two guys I worked with, had their equipment on 30 seconds before myself and Rich, and Tommy Langone says, “We’ll go with John Coughlin’s team. You go do what we were going to do,” which was meet up with Aviation.
In the 1993 bombing, the Emergency Service Unit rappelled from NYPD helicopters onto the roof of the Trade Center and removed all the antennas that were up there so helicopters could touch down, and they could evacuate people that way.
It would be two or three people on, the helicopter would go land, come back, two or three people on — or whatever they could fit on the helicopter at that time. I wasn’t in that unit. I didn’t get into the unit ‘til ‘94.
But we were going to do the same thing. I said to Tommy Langone, “Brother, are you sure you want to switch?” He said, “We got it. Be safe. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Those were the last words Tommy Langone said to me.
So, from there, myself, Rich, Paul Hargrove, and a couple of other guys met up with the Aviation Unit, which landed at Stuyvesant High School. They had a huge playground where their athletic fields were. You can imagine the logistics of where helicopters can land in Manhattan, and that’s one of the very few places.
As we’re about to get on, the pilots are like, “Either get on now or stay off, because we have to get up. God forbid something happens to these towers and these helicopters are grounded. So my boss made the decision that we were going to stay on the ground and start to help with the evacuation of the towers. The helicopters took off, and one of the chiefs said there were going to be no roof operations. The conditions were just too bad.
So, we start to go south down West Street, and as we get to the Trade Center complex, the first tower collapses, and we run. You never saw these little legs of mine [run so fast] — I’m sure I’m only five-six, five-seven on a good day.
We ran from the base of the Trade Center north up West Street, back into Stuyvesant High School. As we’re running, imagine the wave of collapse coming — the concrete, being completely enveloped in this mushroom cloud of dust, getting knocked down.
It was like War of the Worlds. It was apocalyptic. I don’t know how to really put it into words so much. One day, I’ll really try to. My words can’t fully explain what that was like.
What happened next?
We made it up to Stuyvesant High School. We ducked in. One of the doors was open, and there were kids, teachers — a lot of frantic shit going on. We’re covered head to toe. We wore our blue uniforms, and our skin was now completely gray.
If you ever saw the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, there’s a scene where the Union soldiers are riding up on Clint Eastwood, and Clint Eastwood thinks they’re Confederate soldiers because they’re gray. And then they go like this [dusts off arm] and the gray becomes blue. That’s what it was like.
I remember saying to Rich, “Yo, let’s count our fingers and toes. Make sure we’re all intact for the moment.” And Rich said, “Whatever happens from now on, we will never separate. We have to stay attached to each other.”
We made it south down West Street and started working the site. Shortly thereafter, the second tower collapsed. Same exact scene. We ran our asses back up north. Unless you knew downtown Manhattan, you didn’t know the streets, because the street signs were completely covered in dust. We ducked into Stuyvesant High School again, made sure we were OK, and went right back down. And we were working that pile, helping with the evacuation.
Later that night, we were working the site, and the commanding officer of the Emergency Service Unit said, “I’d like everybody on the on the pile to go to the police memorial,” right across West Street into Battery Park. All of the names of the New York City police officers who have ever been killed in the line of duty, from its inception in the 1800s, are on this big, beautiful wall. It’s a place that you don’t want your name on.
So, we lined up, and that’s when I started looking around. That’s when we started realizing who was missing. Tommy Langone and Paul Talty were not with us.
We lost 14 people from ESU that day. The only reason why I’m alive is because Tommy and Paul are not here. Every fucking day, I stand on their shoulders, because I am here. And I owe it to them and their memories to make sure that they’re always remembered. They’re huge. They’re a big part of my life.
I think about those guys every day. The 14 ESU guys were my best friends. We worked together for many years. How we feel about them — how we feel about all the guys in ESU — is a special place. It’s a special brotherhood.
We worked the site until two, three in the morning that first day. We established a command post in the Stuyvesant High School. The Emergency Service Unit — not the NYPD — was all based out of there, and they said, “Take a 10-minute breather, and we’re going to put you guys back in teams, and we’re going to bring you back to the site.” That was the proper thing to do.
So, I walked into the auditorium with Rich Winwood, and this guy Mike O’Brien, and Mike Iliadis, who I worked with for many years, Mike O’Brien is a real Irish New York City cop — doesn’t show a lot of emotion. And when I walked in that room, he grabbed me, hugged me. He started crying. I started crying. Rich Winwood started crying.
Mike Iliadis starts crying. I’m like, “Mike, what’s up?” He’s like, “They had you and Rich as missing originally.” There was a big whiteboard there, and they had the names of the original 40 guys that responded, and our names were on it as unaccounted. It was at that moment they were able to account for us.
Another thing that never slips past me is that I thought the numbers were going to be a lot bigger. We had lost 14. I thought it would be 25. Among the first responders, 23 NYPD officers were killed that day, and 14 were from the Emergency Service Unit.
One night after working the site late, I got back to truck 10 — Emergency Service Squad 10 back in Queens, which we worked out of — and stopped at the auditorium at 1 Police Plaza. That’s when I first saw the families of the guys that were missing. They had brought all the families there.
And I remember going there every single day, as long as the families were there. After whatever shift we did at the Trade Center — we would be there 20 hours, you’d go and see the families of Tommy Langone, Paul Talty, all of them. It was like, “Steph, Rich. Go find Tommy. Go find Paul.”
You would be dead tired, and that gave you the strength to just turn right back around, go back to the site, and go to work — because you had to find these people.
And it wasn’t just about them. It was about all the people that were lost. Civilians. Three thousand people, we’re basically talking about. It was, If you could bring anything back of anybody, and there was nothing left. After that first night, we never found anybody alive. They were pulverized completely.
Think of all the computers that were in the World Trade Center. You didn’t find keyboards. You didn’t find computer screens. They were pulverized into dust. All the glass was pulverized into dust. But what you did find was pictures of a family that may have been on somebody’s desk.
And when you found these things, you said to yourself, “I hope this person, whoever it is, made it out.” It started to put a face on things for me.
Back to September 12.
At four in the morning, I got back to quarters, and the midnight guys were there. We started to keep skeleton crews around the city to do the emergency service work, every-single-day stuff, even though the entire unit was focused on the Trade Center from then forward until we finished up.
We still had our regular responsibilities. New York City doesn’t stop for anything or anybody.
I get in my car. It’s three or four in the morning. I knew I had to be back at 6 a.m. The only reason why I got in my car to go home and not stay at work is, I needed to see my wife and my six-month-old. They had gone to my in-laws’ house a few blocks from us.
I put my key in the car. I turned the key. The accessory parts came on the radio. Whatever you left on was the first thing you heard. And I had turned it off in the middle of the song: “To trigger a synapse.” That’s the first thing I fucking hear. I don’t move until the song finishes. That was my battle cry, and it still is to this day.
I don’t know who beats who, but every year, on the morning of September 11, I’ll get a quick text from Bob or Sarah: “Official Ironman.”
There’s not a day that I don’t listen to “The Official Ironmen Rally Song,” especially driving to work every morning. There’s not a day that goes by that I haven’t had that song in my life. “Am I also worthy of a drink?” Or is any of us, every single day, at the end of the day?
Coming out of September 11, you become part of their family as well.
You can’t replace a father that’s gone. But I watched the Langone kids grow up. I watched the Talty kids grow up. I watched the Coughlin kids grow up. I watched the kids of all 14 of the guys that were lost grow up. And now they’re adults, and now you go to their weddings, and their dad’s not here.
They’re missing something. And you feel them there. That’s the only way I could explain it, because it’s something bigger than all of us. And there are always signs. Every time I look at the clock, it’s 9:11 — Jesus Christ. I’m a big believer that there are always signs, all around you. So, there you go.
Thank you for telling your story.
But, you know, I’m just so grateful to be part of everything Guided by Voices, from then and to now. I’ve spent so much intimate time with Bob.
[On August 21, 2014], we were driving back from the show they did at a theater down in Delaware for Dogfish Head Brewery — both owned by the owner, Sam [Calagione], which was one of the fucking best shows I’ve ever been to.
They did a private show for the entire staff, and a limited amount of tickets were sold. We went on a tour before, of the entire brewing process.
Two days later, Bob and I are driving in my car, and we’re talking about lyrics and stuff. You can see how he operates, because it’s amazing. He has his notebooks with him, and he’s constantly writing ideas down.
I remember him calling Sarah up while we were in the car, going, “I want the next Circus Devils project to be called King Heavy Metal!” And then, later on, King Heavy Metal became a Ricked Wicky album, not a Circus Devils album.
When you listen to music with Bob, it’s even better than you thought it was. I’ll give you an example. It’s well-documented that he feels that Wire’s 154 is one of the greatest albums ever. One of the best-produced.
I’d listened to that album a bunch of times prior — but now, I’m with Bob. I put it on. We’re listening, and he’s pointing out certain things that you and I would ever notice. Now, when I listen to that, I’m listening to what he was listening to.
He makes things better. You go out to dinner with him, and he makes the meal better because of the unbridled joy of sharing a meal with him. Oh my god, this is phenomenal. You have to try this. And he’s giving it to you off his plate. Not a lot of people do that. He operates on a different plane, on a different level than us, yet he is your next-door neighbor.
Lyrically, one of the greatest songs he’s ever written isn’t even a Guided by Voices song. It’s a Ricked Wicky song, which is “Poor Substitute.”
If you listen to it, it’s very autobiographical. I think it’s a love song to Sarah: “Trust me that I’ll never have the Midas touch / A cloud with silver lining isn’t quite as much / Try me, a beast of burden / I’ll be more than qualified / If it’s a trumpeter you want / The walls ain’t gonna fall down anytime.”
He’s baring his soul to us right there. I think he bares his soul in every single thing that he does. But that there is a real glimpse into what I think is one of the greatest songwriters in the history of music.
I’ve had actual arguments with him about songwriters — and, of course, him being a Beatles fan, I’m sorry, this is blasphemy to the Beatles world and all that. The man is a way better songwriter than Lennon/McCartney ever were. It takes two of them to make one of him.
Look at what this guy has done. He’s put out more releases than anybody. The whole thing of, There’s too many albums, I can’t catch up, blah blah blah… You don’t have to. You could start at any point in the history of Robert Pollard.
So, Nick [Mitchell] left the band, and Doug [Gillard] came back in. I knew it. I knew there was going to be a new era of Guided by Voices, and that it was going to start in 2016.
In August of that month, Bob called me up and went, “What are you doing in September?” Whatever week it was. He said, “I’m putting a new album together. I don’t have a working title yet, but I wrote something, and I want you to say it on the album.”
Like, let’s go 360 — you’re asking me to be part of the process! It doesn’t get lost on me. I’m on pins and needles for, like, a month. I said to Sarah, “What’s he got planned?” She does, “I don’t know. He won’t tell me. But I’m sure you’re gonna have fun.” I’m like, “I know I’m gonna have fun.”
So, the band came in on that Sunday. I wasn’t able to meet up with them, but this was the first project they did with Travis [Harrison], recording in his studio.
I walk into the studio. They’d been there for an hour or two before me. And there’s Bobby P. Oh, he’s all excited. And he takes his notebook and goes, “I want you to say this before ‘Packing the Dead Zone.’ I want you to say this like a carnival barker.” And he had written in his notebook:
Bob’s the best coach in the world. He goes, “Do you mind if I come in the booth with you?” Like, You’re asking me? Bob, this is your thing. You can do whatever you want. You’re the boss of me. I’m not the boss of you.
He stood next to me as I did it, and I read it about six times, and it ended up being the first take that we did. He was giddy like a little kid, cheering me on. “Ask easier questions!”
Here’s something that almost happened. One time, I brought Bob out in handcuffs — like, he was under arrest, we let him go for the show, then I was going to rearrest him at the end. All Robert Pollard’s idea.
I almost dropped the cuff key! That was the one thing: Stefanakos, whatever you do, don’t lose the fucking cuff key. I went to put it in, like, Oh my god, that would have been absolutely terrible.
Then, for the Brooklyn show [at the Bell House] during the Space Gun tour, I have a buddy who was a police constable over in England, in Hartfordshire. He gave me his hat, and I brought Bobby out in that. I had an old-school NYPD choker on — what they used to wear in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.
And then, to the crowd, I said, “We’re creating a society of cell-phone-crazed, marijuana-smoking zombies!”
What would you like the world to know about Robert Pollard and GBV?
The answer is simple yet complex. He is the single most important songwriter and musician in the history of modern music.
Where many others before have come and truly made their mark on the world, like Elvis and the Beatles, Robert Pollard has done the exact same thing in the American landscape.
Coming out of Dayton, he basically, single-handedly, with his friends, created a whole new genre of music in that lo-fi, do-it-yourself workload. At the same time, he has written more songs than anyone, that are absolutely gorgeous, insightful, reflective, in so many ways that no one will ever be able to duplicate that.
He is so important to American music that there is no reason why he is not honored in places like the Kennedy Awards. Any of the different arts type of organizations that are out there. He should be revered in such a way, because he’s inspired thousands of other musicians, bands, and songwriters to get down and work on their craft.
If you look at the sheer amount of artists he has influenced over the years, the accolades would be endless. And he is as famous as he wants to be. I’m never selfish — but at the same time, I want these things for him.
What a great read!!
Just an absolutely unreal, stunning story/read! I’ve always had a soft spot for “Official Ironmen”, now forget it, it’s one of the all-timers. Sometimes when I feel
I’ve lost my way with Robert Pollard/GBV, I read one of these stories, and get right back in, like Steve said you can (basically) dive (back) in!!!