THIS RIGHT HERE IS AN ALBUM ABOUT PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING,
which I used to watch twice a week on the UHF channels on a black and white TV in a place on Piedmont Avenue that we rented from a dude named Arnold Pan.
My stepfather's father had been a wrestling promoter in Indiana in the '40s and '50s. It's always a challenge for me to state simply what things were like between my stepfather and me, because there were few sweet spots that didn't end up getting polluted or corrupted by the dynamic of abuse, but in wrestling we had a point of contact: in many ways, he was a child who'd never grown up, and he liked to play the part of an antagonistic older brother at the fights. He would take me to see the matches at the Grand Olympic, a magnificent old building then going to seed: roller derby was also a big deal there. After the building got sold, it hosted punk shows for a while. It's a church now. My stepfather — Mike — would cheer the heels loudly and unapologetically, sometimes to the point of getting into heated altercations with people in the seats nearby. He would be the only person in the building applauding Eddy "the Continental Lover" Mansfield, who was, for one brief, forgotten moment, the most hated heel in all southern California.
Wrestling became big business in the '80s; the regional territories, which had been a relatively small-stakes game, were folded into national promotions. Prior to this consolidation, professional wrestling was a cheap ticket for a working family. If you went mid-week, the Wednesday night card would set you back five bucks. There were no frills and no pyrotechnics. The only merchandise for sale was the program, printed in one color on a single page folded four ways. It cost one dollar.
The situation in my house was deteriorating badly and permanently during the span of my hyper-fandom, which lasted from when I was nine until I was maybe thirteen. My life was chaotic and frightening. I did not cheer the heels. I feared and hated them. I wanted to see them punished. When, in the heat of battle, the good guys would abandon the rulebook in order to fight fire with fire, something inside me responded primally.
These were comic-book heroes who existed in physical space. I was a child. I needed them, and, every week, they came through for me. The southern California territory was not a major franchise, and most of the wrestlers who inspired fanatical devotion or froth-lipped anger at the Olympic were no-names beyond the southwest. In 1982, the southern California promotion was sold to Vince McMahon, and that was the end of that. During my teenage years, it was music that would save my life, but this album is for Chavo Guerrero, Sr., master of the moonsault, on whom I pinned my hopes when I was very young.
—John Darnielle, Durham, North Carolina