An Interview with Mickey Avalon

By Katey Khaos

“Jane Fonda,” “My D*ck,” “Mr. Right.” Any of those titles sound familiar to you? They should ~ they’re tracks from Mickey Avalon’s self-titled debut album. I had a chance to speak with Mr. Right himself and get to know the man behind the name Mickey Avalon.

As you may have guessed, Mickey Avalon is his stage name, and it’s always interesting to find out how an artist concocts his stage personality. “Porno names.” Really? Mickey laughs, “Yeah.” Remember using the name of your first pet and the first street you lived on to come up with a new name ~ whether it be your undercover name, alter-ego, or uh, maybe even stripper name? That’s how Mickey came up with his now household name. “I didn’t really have any pets growing up, but Andre Legacy is really good at coming up with names, so that’s how we got Mickey, and the first street I lived on was Avon, but we didn’t like that, so we changed it to Avalon.” And there you have it ~ Mickey Avalon was born.

Mickey Avalon is the poster child for overcoming major problems and turning one’s life around. Mickey’s past is filled with less-than-ideal situations ~ drugs, prostitution, and death. At what point does anyone stop what they’re doing, clean up his act, and make something of himself? For Mickey, that turning point was his daughter. Afraid of leading by bad example, Mickey got on the track to recovery for his daughter’s sake. “It was a matter of growing up in order to bring someone else into the world,” Mickey says.

Many of Mickey’s songs reference his past ~ take these lyrics from the track “Friends and Lovers:” “The filthy rich and the dirt-dirt poor are all the same when they can’t take no more.” Explains Mickey, “I like that lyric because it’s like at the end of the road, it all feels the same regardless of who you are.”

If Mickey hadn’t found his way into the music industry as a rapper, what would he be up to these days? “I don’t mean to be cliché, but I’d probably be in prison, a mental institutional or dead,” he admits. “People like me can’t be doctors or lawyers.”

“What I do now is definitely a job, but I try to keep the job part to a minimum, you know,” Mickey says. “When I’m on stage, that’s my job…I just let loose. Everything else, I try to let somebody else worry about.”

Mickey’s seen it all on stage, too. “I’ve had the usual stuff thrown up on stage: bras, panties drugs, the 90 MPH beer bottles ~ that’s never fun. I’ve had a [sex toy] thrown up on stage once, that was kinda strange.”

And now a question for Mickey’s fans ~ Mickey, does your d*ck still cost a late night fee? “Not anymore,” Mickey jokes.

Be sure to pick up Mickey’s sophomore album Loaded, which he says is the perfect follow-up to his self-titled album and don’t miss Mickey when he hits the Middle East in Boston on May 9th!

www.mickeyavalon.com