John “JD” DeServio, of Old Bridge, has gone from dressing up like KISS with his friends in fifth grade to touring last year with his band Black Label Society alongside heavy metal superstars Judas Priest. I t all started with a picture. John “JD” DeServio was a third-grader in the Old Bridge School District and he was already a big music fan; his favorite band was British rockers Jethro Tull. Then his buddy showed him a picture of his favorite band, the four face-painted, costumed members of KISS perched atop the Empire State Building, and DeServio instantly traded in Jethro Tull for KIss.
DeServio pointed to the Kiss member with the demon makeup and asked his friend what he did. His buddy explained it was the group’s legendary bassist Gene Simmons.
“I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’ ” De- Servio said. “That’s it. I didn’t know nothing about it. I’ve just seen him, I thought he was the best and wanted to be him.”
So today, he may not have the makeup, but otherwise DeServio, the bassist of the popular metal band Black Label Society and leader of his own band Cycle of Pain, seems to be doing Simmons proud.
DeServio, 44, of the Cliffwood Beach section of Old Bridge, Middlesex County, was recently recognized by the Alumni Path Foundation with the Alumni Performance Award for Art and Music, an award he was shocked but honored to receive.
“It’s been a long road, man,” said De- Servio, a graduate of Cedar Ridge High School, looking back on his career, a road that seems to start, end and continually pass through Old Bridge.
Some of his first gigs were the school talent shows in Old Bridge, DeServio said. He remembers dressing up like KISS with buddies in the fifth grade and singing “Detroit Rock City,” and in sixth grade, equipped with his first bass, a brown Danelectro that he said “looked like Jimmy Page’s guitar,” playing “Ozone” off Ace Frehley’s eponymous solo album.
From there his ear started to develop and DeServio listened to more music, falling in love as a 13-year-old with Iron Maiden, the band that he said spawned his passion for metal. “Steve Harris’ fingers are unbelievable,” he said.
DeServio played and practiced a lot, even using his record player with the builtin cassette to create backing tracks to solo over.
“Every second I had a bass in my hand was an amazing minute,” he said. “It was always just fun to get better and better.”
While attending Cedar Ridge (which eventually merged with Madison Central High School to form the current Old Bridge High School), he continued to grow musically, playing with friends at Battle of the Bands in high school and the county votech, at venues in the area like the Airport Plaza Skating Rink, and at backyard parties that DeServio said would inevitably be shut down by police after a few minutes of music.
DeServio also took music theory classes at Cedar Ridge, which he said helped him tremendously, providing him with the foundations of music knowledge.
“It’s the musical language,” he said. “Just knowing the scales and stuff, they’re like our roadmaps to where we need to go on the instrument.”
After graduating from Cedar Ridge in 1985, he attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston and afterward went on his first tour with Jodi Bongiovi, Jon’s cousin, recording at The Power Station in New York and even making a video for MTV with her.
From there, he played with a few different artists, including Lita Ford and Vinnie Moore, before touring with Pride and Glory, a band headed by a good friend, Zakk Wylde, whom he had met years before at Close Encounters on Route 35 in Sayreville.
“I just heard about this amazing guitar player [playing at the club] and he was there ripping,” DeServio said of his first meeting with Wylde. “We became friends and jammed and then that was it.”
DeServio joined Wylde when Wylde formed Black Label Society in 1998, leaving the band but then returning in 2005, coproducing the group’s last two albums.
DeServio spent much of last year touring with Black Label Society alongside hard rock superstars Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest, which he called “insane” for a kid who grew up listening to Priest. “Here I am on tour with these guys and talking with them and telling them ‘Yeah, I was playing ‘The Green Manalishi’ in eighth grade, and here I am now, and I am honored,’ ” he said.
DeServio also is finding success with his own project, Cycle of Pain, featuring two fellow Old Bridge natives, Gregg Locascio and Joe Taylor, whom DeServio played with in a band in high school. Tracks from the band’s album have been featured on MTV and the FX television show “Sons of Anarchy,” and they are looking to put out another album soon.
“We were together playing Battle of the Bands when we were 15. Here we are now 30 years later playing with Black Label or Shinedown or putting out our own records and having our music on television,” he said. Yet even as things change over the years, two things remain the same for DeServio: The first is his love for the bass — “I get to spank it, I get to smack the hell out of it, and it loves it, and it just keeps coming back for more,” he said.
The other constant is his permanent address. When not on tour, DeServio can be found living in the house he grew up in in Cliffwood Beach. DeServio said he has a studio in the basement, a nice view of the Raritan Bay, New York just a short distance away, good food around, and great neighbors, family and friends all close at hand.
To the heavy metal bassist who spends hundreds of days on the road each year, “This is home,” he said.