Interview with Bobby Devito, author of Burned

By Christopher Stokum and Elizabeth Milo

WNW recently spoke with author Bobby Devito about his book Burned, an autobiography about his life as a rock guitarist in the 80s and 90s.

WNW: Why did you decide to write a tell-all autobiography? What do you hope to accomplish by sharing the stories you do in Burned?
Devito BURNED was not something I "decided" to write, it was something I HAD to write. I was playing fulltime as a musician in Key West, and being a sober person in Key West can be an incredibly lonely existence. I only worked about 20 hours per week, and had the rest of my time to myself, which was lovely. I spent a great deal of time at the Hemingway House, and the literary past of Key West really soaked into my being. I had already written a few chapters when my sound engineer called me as he was recording demos for a female singer/songwriter who was married to author Randy Wayne White. I met Randy, and he really wanted to read my stuff, which I initially resisted doing...but then relented, going to Kinko's and having a bound manuscript made for him. He came to one of my shows and sat for two hours reading my manuscript, never looking up during my show. Afterward, Randy encouraged me to finish the book, and gave me the "literary balls" to think that I might actually be a “writer.”
I do not know what I hope to accomplish by sharing these stories, other than I hope that people enjoy them and possibly learn from them and not make the same mistakes I have. And hopefully these stories might give hope and faith to others in the same sort of predicaments I found myself stuck in.

WNW: You discuss drug abuse and addiction a number of times in your book. Why did you choose to include these parts of your life?
Devito The issues of alcoholism and addiction form a thread throughout my entire life, starting with my grandfather. And a great deal of my life was spent using or abusing various substances. I do not wish to glorify these experiences, and I honestly think that my book shows a much less glamorous look at what a potential "rock star’s" life looks like from the inside. As a child, I grew up idolizing many musicians who were my heroes, and several of them were notorious addicts or alcoholics. There seems to a meme that to be creative and successful, one must indulge in drugs or alcohol.

WNW: It seems that some of these sections might be directed toward drug addicts. Do you hope to send them a certain message?
Devito I hope that ALL of the book is directed to EVERYONE. My hope is that other addicts or alcoholics might recognize patterns of behavior and learn from my mistakes instead of learning it the hard way, like I have. I want them to see that even the worst cases can change. And that support from others is essential, and you can never escape your consequences.

WNW: Why is it so important to you that certain names not be changed in your story?
Devito Well, it would be quite easy to identify many of the people in my past anyhow, through public record searches and other services. And there are others in my story who have been quite public about their issues, including one character who just spent an entire year on Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab Show on VH1. So does that person REALLY have any expectation of privacy regarding his drug use? I am not naming names of the countless celebrities that I have encountered at recovery meetings in LA, which would really surprise many people. There are FAR more people in my history that I am not "naming", and the few that are named in my book are essential to my story.

WNW: You worked hard to self-promote your music in the past. How has promoting Burned compared to that?
Devito It's just as hard, whether you are promoting a book or an album. I always point to LVX Nova as an example of how an unknown artist can become successful through hard work and effort. It's a great album musically, but since it is not "pop" music, it was a long road to getting a major label deal for that project. I spent a year working college radio, alternative press, non-mainstream retail, and the internet to make that album gain traction. I think that promoting BURNED will be just as arduous, but this book has the potential to reach a much greater audience that anything else I have created, so I will do whatever it takes to help it be successful.

WNW: Love, drugs, and music have run your life up until this point-- do you see writing becoming a new driving force for you?
Devito Well, I am currently married to wife #5, and she has been a great source of stability for me, as well as someone who has "double digit sobriety." I have the "love" part taken care of, finally. The alcohol and drugs part of my life finally ended back before I wrote the book, and I continue to maintain and "prune" my sobriety on a daily basis. I am very active in the musical instrument manufacturing community, with several endorsements and a lot of video demos of guitar gear on YouTube. Writing is kind of "new" to me, although I did have some articles published in the statewide Florida Music Magazine JAM in the 90s, and I also wrote a pretty extensive thesis on ambient music in order to graduate from New College in Florida back in 1996.
But I do find myself very interested in writing, although watching a real professional like Randy Wayne White work is daunting. He gets up at 4 am and works until noon or later EVERY DAY when he is writing a book. Writing is as much craft as it is art to me, and I am still learning. My coursework at New College with Professor Maureen Harkin really opened my eyes as far as literary theory, cultural studies, and how literature is interpreted and deconstructed. Her classes really opened up huge new worlds to me about what literature is and can be. I have two new books currently in the works—one is a proper novel that is set in Key West, and the other is a non-fiction history of a man named John W Ek, one of the most famous military knifemakers in the world, an ex-CIA operative, and trainer of the 2506 Brigade for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. John's son Gary is one of my best friends, and he has given me the entire Ek family archives and photos to work with, so that book will be quite unique.

WNW: How have the accusations of libel affected you personally?
Devito To be honest, it really threw me for a loop at first. There is no libel whatsoever in my book, and the only person who seems to be getting slandered is myself. I am certainly not a "hero" in BURNED, although I do emerge for the better at the end of the book. However, there were indeed a couple of "tweaks" to my story that have been made to protect the guilty. In the final analysis, I don' think that I made anyone look worse or better than they are in real life. My third ex-wife just read the book, and while she does not agree with all of it, she is a writer herself and understood that this book is MY truth, my perspective of what was happening around me and to me during these times. As Bob Uzzo used to tell me over and over "IT IS WHAT IT IS". And that's BURNED in a nutshell!

For more information about Robert Devito and his book, Burned, please visit his Twitter page or Smashwords page.