NEW NOISE BOOK NOOK PRESENTS... “I had to check my memories against others’,” he says. “I made a lot of calls.” He called everyone from his ex-wife and the mother of his first child, Amy Keim of Nausea to Cro-Mags’ Harley Flanagan—who was also writing a book—to his brothers. Helping Miret was writer John Wiederhorn, who also collaborated on “Ministry: The Lost Gospels According To Al Jourgensen” and Scott Ian’s “I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax.” Miret is ardently gracious when speaking of his writing partner. “He created a flow,” he shares. Miret had the memories and the experiences, but Wiederhorn molded the text. “I wanted to make sure it was me telling the story,” he says, and Miret’s individual voice certainly stamps the paragraphs as they stream. The New York attitude and nostalgia embolden the lessons embedded. Again, Miret celebrates Wiederhorn’s symbiosis. “He was very hands-on,” he says. “It wasn’t just a guy helping me edit. He became part of it. He loved it!” Miret recalls Wiederhorn’s enthusiastic embrace of “My Riot” and how he showed true dedication and ownership.
INTERVIEW WITH COAUTHOR ROGER MIRET BY HUTCH Roger Miret has just returned from a tour with Agnostic Front, the band he began fronting in 1983 and has defined for the last 35 years. This European stint included 30 shows over 31 days. Miret returns to a record-breaking, mailbox-crippling, recycling-bin melting Arizona heatwave topping out at 117 degrees—but the heat is worth returning to his family. Agnostic Front have consistently put out albums and tour most of each year. Despite all the effort and energy Miret pours into his band, he found time to write an exhaustive novel—released on Aug. 29 via Lesser Gods Publishing—recounting both his and Agnostic Front’s early lives. He has been incarcerated. He has been homeless, raising a family in a New York City squat for years. He raised two more
kids with his current wife, vocalist Denise Miret, in a nice house in Arizona. He has been sweated by cops, gotten in fights, and run drugs through airports. With all that turmoil, Miret still refers to writing “My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit, Guts & Glory” as “the hardest thing I have ever done.” Miret credits Lars Frederiksen with telling him to write the book when Frederiksen was producing Agnostic Front’s 1999 album, Riot, Riot, Upstart. “It took 20 years,” he says of the process, then conjures the true adversary to writing his story: “I’m very introverted.” He repeats, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” While combatting his introverted tendencies, he also found that the trouble with telling one’s story is that it is inevitably tangled in many others’ lives.
The book goes deep, starting with Miret’s birth in Cuba and arrival in the U.S. “This really is an immigrant story,” Miret states. “My Riot” then transitions into early N.Y.C. scene days and Agnostic Front’s first life, from 1983 to 1992. The reader is, as Miret puts it, “fast forwarded” through other experiences and the reunion to the present, but Miret wanted to keep it focused on the early days. “Otherwise, this would have been a 1000page book!” he exclaims. Maybe in a sequel… Here, his fans are welcomed into his life over 295 pages and 40 chapters. The introductions by Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed and Al Barr of The Bruisers—oh, and that Dropkicks band—set a tone. Then, the spotlight is all Miret’s. That spotlight has the grit and grime of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the ‘80s—warts and all—tempering the glare, but illuminated is Miret’s generous nature, fighting spirit, genuine character, and sincere demeanor.