Michael Alago grew up in Brooklyn, just a subway ride away from one of the epicenters of ‘70s rock. The music he eagerly devoured as a teen not only enabled his music-industry career but gave him an abiding interest in photography and design through those wonderful gatefold album covers. In 1980 he started work at The Ritz, one of NYC’s premiere music venues. He made connections fast and jumped to A&R at Elektra, where he signed Metallica. As he tells it in his memoir, he was never closeted and cut—shall we say—a unique figure a Puerto Rican gay man in the white homophobic ‘80s metal subculture. In I Am Michael Alago, he comes across as a spiritual person and a survivor—of HIV and addiction.
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