Rowdy Roddy runs rampant
By JEAN SONMOR -- Toronto Sun
Champagne and poached salmon in a private suite atop Harbour Castle Hilton
sounds like a great
way to do business -- conduct an interview -- talk to a star.
But when the star is the mad wrestler, Rowdy Roddy Piper, the interview
threatens to be an
encounter. And champagne, no matter how dry, how French, is no more than a
courage booster.
I'd tried to stage the event in the imposing atrium dining room at the
McGill Club for Women,
hoping that the five-storey ceiling and the bevies of high-powered women
might subdue the man into an
ordinary conversation. I'd heard too many stories of his impromptu antics. I
dreaded meeting the master of
the surprise attack on his home turf.
But such is the curse of a huge celebrity that he can't stick his nose out
of the hotel room. Even in
a private club, he insisted, he'd be watched and talked about. And besides,
let's face it, the "old street kid"
as he calls himself, is happier at home, even if home, for the moment, is a
hotel suite.
But I needn't have worried: Rowdy Roddy was an exuberant raconteur, a huge
presence in the
room, but he was an chivalrous and gentlemanly as any man I've met for a decade.
That was clear almost immediately, as he whapped open the door, banging it
against the wall in
his enthusiasm. Sun photographer Mike Cassese and I seemed to have caught
him already fully launched
into a description of his day. Yes, of course, the telephone.
He finished the call, immediately picking up the same theme with us. He
interrupted himself
mid-sentence to announce the champagne was on it's way.
The room was throbbing with energy -- all of it his. It was as though we'd
stepped onto a faster
moving planet.
The supporting cast didn't have much to do. He sat down heavily, stretching
out his bad left leg
to save the knee, and started into his Toronto schtick.
Yes, the rumor's true he did live here as a kid. But not in Parkdale, in
more uptown Don Mills. In
fact he was expelled from North York's Donview Heights Junior High School
for carrying a switch blade.
The same habit got him kicked out of his middle-class home. He signed on for
a brief stint at Victoria
Park High School, joined the football and wrestling teams but "didn't do
nothin' scholastically," he says. "I
oughta visit those schools someday, nothin' commercial, just for my heart."
The Lansdowne Gym was one of his favorite hang-outs. But his memory really
kicks into gear
when he starts reminiscing about the youth hostel at the old Central Y where
he lived as close to the
ground as anyone gets. "It cost you a quarter and you got two sandwiches,
milk and cookies and a bed.
You had to check your weapons and drugs at the door and they gave them back
to you -- if you were that
way inclined -- at the door. In the morning they'd get you up at 6 o'clock
with loud, loud music, give you a
towel for a shower, two eggs, a piece of bacon and then had to get out. Go
out and hustle another quarter
so you could stay the next night."
For three years from 12 to 15, he says, he hitchhiked Canada flopping in
youth hostels wherever
he could find them. The Yonge Street Mall was a Mecca for street kids in the
early 70s and Roddy --
whatever his real last name is -- was one of the troubled kids who used it
as a base. One of his quick
money fixes was to roll the "homosexuals and the wealthy guys who hung
around the Brown Derby. It's
not something I'm real proud of, but I did it."
He talks chillingly about his struggles in a "prominent family" headed by a
CN policeman father,
a man who "never told a lie in his life." They lived all over northern
Canada from The Pas, Manitoba, to
Churchill, to Saskatoon.
"We literally lived in a red shack by the railroad track and they moved us
every year because they
didn't want the policeman to become too familiar with the public. Yeah,
too familiar." His laugh is
huge and raucous.
By the time the family moved to Toronto the father had worked his way up
and Roderick ("It's
Gaelic for conqueror you know") was moving into puberty -- and crime in that
order.
"I pushed drugs. I robbed places. I was a no good s.o.b. I was a horrible
liar," says Piper, now
furrowing his brow. "I don't know why. Maybe I was trying to live up to my
father on the other side."
The dates get a little mixed up in this story so he may not have been quite
as precocious as he
remembers when he says he was an 11-year-old "very troubled child walking
about shooting holes in
people's windows and collecting money, robbing place. I was in deep trouble;
my middle sister had messed
me up real good. And just like a typical kid I prayed to God to show me a sign."
The sign, an early-morning encounter with an open Bible, came on the day he
demanded it and
made so much impact that he still counts it as the moment that "changed
everything. I've been a Christian
ever since."
The switchblades in school were the end of the line for his policeman
father: Roddy had to find a
new address. The family couldn't cope. It's a rift that has never healed.
He started his pro wrestling career at 16 in Winnipeg, fighting twice a
day, seven days a week. In
his spare time he put up posters and built the ring. He was paid $300 a
week, barely enough to keep body,
soul and dogfood together in the Chevy Vega he called home. He lived with a
"brindel-colored pit bull
terrier."
Right now at 32, 6-foot-2 1/2 and 242 pounds he's just "peaking", he
insists -- even though he
was trouble walking across the room without limping or groaning.
He was hopping around with Ringo, the room-service man, laying the table
and pouring the
champagne so it was a little hard to ignore his labored movement. Peaking?
Is this what they call
peaking?
"Lady, do you know what I do for a living?" he hollers over his shoulder.
"Now where were we?
I'm getting punchy, I keep losing my train of thought."
He isn't kidding: Two dozen times he asked to be reminded what he was
talking about. "Oh yeah,
my wife can tell you that. If you'd seen me five, six, seven years ago ...
there's a definite stutter of speech,
a definite loss of memory, but it's (wrestling's) better than making pizza.
That doesn't pay a dime."
Ask him why he doesn't quit and in a roundabout way you get two answers. He
talks about his
ranch and herd of horses in Portland, Oregon. "I've got overhead. How am I
going to keep my family in
the style they've become accustomed to?"
The other answer sounds a little more convincing. "I've worked 16 years for
this, hard labor, am I
going to quit now when I'm peaking?"
But, no doubt about it, peaking doesn't make him happy.
"To tell you the truth, I've never been more miserable in my entire life,"
he says. "I'm so
lonesome."
"Ah, C'mon, Rowdy Roddy."
"Listen lady, you don't need to sit here with some jerk with 'I've got an
attitude' on his T-shirt,
bullshit you. And, I don't mean to offend but whatever you write in your
paper tomorrow will make such a
little difference to the gate (of Sunday's wrestling match) I don't need to lie.
"My family, my wife Kitty, and my two daughters Ariel (18 months) and
Stasia (4), need me at
home. My daughter gets on the phone and crises. I fly my wife down and cries
when she comes and cries
when she goes. I have all this celebrity, all this bullshit, and it means
absolutely nothing. Sincerely.
Because you are a prisoner of yourself.
"I'm making more money than possibly 90% of any athletes in any other
sports, but now they tell
me I have to get a home in New York and they've got me looking at million
dollar homes in Stanford,
Conn.
"And the pressure of being away from my wife. She needs my company; she
needs me in bed at
night; and she needs me to console her in the afternoon when things go
wrong. I'm away 250 days a year."
So stop. Put some sanity in your life.
"No. I can't. This is the time to go for it.
"But actually, I have got a movie coming out at the end of November,
Body Slam. It's sort
of a half-assed biography, but it's a really well-made production.
"That's what I'm trying to do: Make a break with the wrestling on top and
slip into this other
world of ... actually acting."
Then he folds up his tent. Tells himself he's talking too much, tells me
he's boring, and circles
back to tell some well-rehearsed funny stories. By now I'm eating. He's
saving his double order of salmon
for later, hoping eating late will help him sleep.
But just so I'll feel better, so I'll think he's eating too, he starts
chucking pieces of lettuce over his
shoulder.
Suddenly, Rowdy Roddy is on again
PHOTO: Roddy Piper as photographed by Mike Cassese, Toronto Sun during this interview.
