I was born on December 19, 1953, in Cleveland, Ohio. My dad’s name, your grandfather, was Robert Lee Palmer, and my mom’s name, your grandmother, was Ruthie Dell Palmer. She had five children from a previous marriage. She didn’t want me to be a ‘junior’, so she gave me the middle name, Donnell. My dad was a train mechanic for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He died when I was two, and at the age of five, my two sisters, my mom, and I moved to Oakland, California. We stayed with our grandparents, her mom, and stepdad. He was a Baptist minister, so that meant church every Sunday. That was my introduction to God and I’ve remained a Christian throughout most of my life.

Music started for me when I was introduced to it at the age of ten. I can still remember riding around in Oakland, California, in the early Sixties in my older sister’s deep-purple convertible Pontiac, my head leaning back, staring at the starry skies, as the tinny radio blasted out Motown hits by The Supremes, Smokey and The Miracles, The Temptations, etc. You could hear it throughout the neighborhoods. It was intoxicating! From that moment forward, I knew— somehow or someway—I needed to be a part of the magic coming from that radio.

After a few years, we moved from Oakland to a rough and rural part of California. Sixty miles east of Los Angeles, it is called San Bernardino. To this day, it still has the highest murder rate in California. Because of that, when I grew up, a lot of my best friends either wound up in prison for life, murdered, dead from drug overdoses, or in mental institutions. I believe it’s one of the reasons I’ve dealt with a life-long crippling battle with depression—from trying to make sense of it all at such a young age.

When did music start for me? At the age of thirteen, I got my first guitar. Shortly after that, I heard Stax Records session guitarist Steve Cropper play on Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools, and later the music of Jimi Hendrix. I played in a band and had to learn most of his songs. This was when I knew this would be my life’s path and a possible way out of the horrible place I grew up in.

One day I was expelled from the ninth grade. I can still remember my mother telling me, “You will not become another dead statistic in this town. You need to make something great from a bad situation.” Bless her soul and may she rest in peace. Those words still ring true to this very day. I resorted to staying in the house, sitting in my room, and practicing until my fingers bled.

By the mid-Seventies, I’d had my first child, a beautiful baby girl. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. We all lived together for a while in San Bernardino. It was around this time that the soul-pop group WAR signed me and my early childhood friends to our first major record deal (it would have been the equivalent of a half-million dollars today). We were in our early twenties. After a while, the commute became too much for the band, so we all decided to move to Hollywood. Sometimes, we also played at Vietnam rallies for actress Jane Fonda and comedian Dick Gregory. Those were fun times.

I remember one day in 1975, our band was standing in front of a house on Hollywood Boulevard when this guy walking his dogs stopped and talked to us. We told him we were working on our first album. He said he was an unemployed actor. He had written a script and the movie studio had asked to buy it from him, but they wanted to cast a more well-known actor in the lead. He’d refused because he wanted to play the part himself. We told him that since he was broke he should perhaps consider it. That’s when he said, “Never sell your dreams.” We never forgot that.

One year later, I was walking past a movie theatre and noticed that same actor on the poster: it was Sylvester Stallone, in the lead role of his movie script Rocky. I called the guys over and showed them. We never forgot what he’d said.

Soon after that, my daughter’s mom and I separated because she didn’t want to move to the Los Angeles area no matter how much I begged her. We just seemed to grow apart after that. I simply didn’t know how to deal with the severe bipolar depression that had already taken over. I ran away from everything. I had no coping skills. My daughter really suffered. I saw her less and less because of it and because of the drugs I was taking, and now the alcohol had gotten so bad I began to lose touch with reality and my priorities. That’s something I regret to this very day. I can’t make that time up to her.

Not long after that, we disbanded. In the late Seventies, I was still living in L.A. and went on to do sessions around the city, playing on records for Natalie Cole, Peabo Bryson, Patti LaBelle, LTD, Robbie Dupree, Bobby Womack, and working on box-office hit movies, such as Bustin’ Loose (with Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson) and Cheech and Chong. Things had now gotten pretty out of control. I stayed high all the time just to fight it. I had developed a very expensive cocaine habit and was on the verge of financial ruin. I needed to start going to church again, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel I needed God in my life at that time. I was fine being out of control. It had become my normal.

One day around 1980, I got a call from my good friend, Lawrence Hilton Jacobs from the Welcome Back, Kotter show. He asked me to come down for a recording session. When I arrived, I was introduced to a new artist being produced by an NBC executive named Sy Kravitz. His wife, Roxie Roker (the actress from The Jeffersons), would drop off their son on her way to film the show. I would give him guitar lessons whenever we broke for lunch. He was a quick learner. That kid was Lenny Kravitz. I ran into him years later in a restaurant in 1997. By then he was a world-famous singer. I told him how proud of him I was. He remembered the story in detail.

It was around this time that I met and soon started dating this amazing woman. Her name was Penny. Life with her was good and we got along well. She would later become my wife. It wasn’t long before we were heavily doing drugs, and we eventually lost our apartment. At times, we even slept in our car in alleys.

Between session jobs and touring, most of our money was going on fueling our out-of-control drug and alcohol habits. Every dime of it. We didn’t eat half the time just so we could buy drugs. I was touring with Billy Preston at that time and we would open in Las Vegas at The Sahara Hotel for Don Rickles. While at the hotel, we ate like kings—filet mignon, the best champagne money could buy, you name it—and there was always plenty of cocaine... mounds of it.

Every time we’d return to L.A., we were back to sleeping in our car or at a friend’s. We were essentially homeless. It was a horrible roller coaster and we just didn’t quite know how to get off of it. My depression was at an all-time-low. I always suffered in silence. I never told Penny; I didn’t know how.

I clearly remember working one day at a recording session with Bobby Womack, Billy Preston, Johnny Guitar Watson, Eddie Kendricks, and Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix’s drummer). I had done so much cocaine and alcohol that I fell over on the floor right in the middle of the session. I had overdosed. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital with doctors trying to revive me. That was my first big warning, but it still wasn’t enough to make me quit. I needed to be in rehab. Little did we know that fate was waiting just around the corner, and it was clearly beyond anything we could have ever imagined.