He was diagnosed with a brain tumour after suffering a blackout when he was 15 years old. The treatment took the best part of a year out of his life. On his 16th birthday, shortly after finishing treatment for the tumour, Genest had a pirate's skull and crossbones tattooed on his arm. He describes this as his 'teenage rebel' phase and soon after, he and his father Roc fell out and Genest left home. He doesn't say what the row was about, but he moved to Montreal and spent the next five or six years sleeping rough, washing cars, jumping ticket barriers and collecting police fines (though no police record) for various 'minor' misdemeanours, which Formichetti later settled. Fellow street dwellers who learned of his brain surgery nicknamed him 'Zombie'. 'It was awesome. We were living on the streets, sleeping on the roofs, hitchhiking from city to city, from party to party. We were young and living from day to day,' he says in a Québécois French accent, though he insists on speaking in English.
