by Lewis Shiner
In Carlsbad, Sid the Shark had actually sprung for a motel with a pool, so after getting up at six-thirty to be the first into the caves, they spent the afternoon lying in the sun, surrounded by screaming children. Skip and Dennis drank themselves into an early night, and Laurie got sunburned on the tops of her feet. The next morning, only minutes away from Texas, they turned north again to the Bluebird Theater in Denver, then on to Boulder, Bozeman, Montana, and Moscow, Idaho, home of the Karl Marx Pizza.
By the second week patterns had formed. Skip and Dennis anchored one room, Gabe and Laurie the other. Jim and Chuck alternated. Chuck always slept on the floor; one night in six each of the others slept on a rollaway.
In each new room, Gabe unpacked his travel alarm, his own pillow, a baseball-sized carving of a cross-legged man with his head and hands buried in his lap that Laurie called “The Navel Observatory,” and a picture of L’Shondra in a plastic frame. Then he set up a Discman and his carrying case of Coltrane and Miles Davis CDs, and while he was waiting for his turn for the shower, or waiting to go to the gig, he would sit perfectly still under the headphones with his eyes closed.
Her 27th birthday fell on an off day, the Tuesday before the Moscow show. Laurie pretended to sleep late while Gabe and Chuck got up, stumbled in and out of the bathroom, and finally dressed and went out for breakfast. None of them had shown any sign of remembering that it was her birthday and she told herself it was better that way. The day seemed fraught with significance. Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had all died at 27, and Laurie’s major label debut was still at least two months away.
She called her mother and then Grandpa Bill, washed the homesick tears away, dressed in jeans and three layers of T-shirts and tank tops, and went down to the coffee shop across the street from the motel. There she found the entire band—except for Skip—sitting around a lemon cream pie loaded with candles, which they proceeded to light while singing a hideously out-of-tune “Happy Birthday.”
Laurie was unsure if there was more to Skip’s avoiding her than one of his moods, nor could she tell if anyone else was complicit in their separate sleeping arrangements. During that second week on the road she moved from wondering what she’d done wrong to a simmering anger. On the drive from Moscow to Eugene, Oregon, she commandeered the shotgun seat of the Mustang and asked for an explanation.
“We’re in a fishbowl,” Skip said. “There’s no privacy.”
“It could be had, if you wanted it,” she said, and, after a pause, amazed at herself, “So could I.”
Skip licked his lips nervously and glanced at her. She was sitting sideways in her bucket seat, legs tucked up under her.
“Goddamn,” he said.
It turned out that in the back of his trunk, behind his suitcases and dirty clothes, Skip kept an old sleeping bag, allowing him to fulfill her blanket and canteen fantasies almost to the letter. They were an hour late getting in to Eugene, and when she climbed in the van to go to the club she was shocked at how guilty she felt, how far out of kilter the band’s equilibrium suddenly seemed.
Phone call from Olympia
I read about Laurie’s signing in the August 21 Billboard and my heart leaped. It was as if Laurie’s good fortune held out hope for my own stagnant career. The story had no details and no photo, only a mention in passing at the end of a paragraph where Claybeck talked about landing Random Axe, a band he predicted would be “the next Green Day.”
That mention was enough to give me the opening I needed. I went back to my editors with a fresh pitch, and Pulse went for it. With that commitment I talked to Ardrey and then Melinda and finally Laurie.
She called me collect from a pay phone at a Vietnamese restaurant called Mini Saigon in Olympia, Washington, on September 23. It was still early in the tour; when I go back to our taped conversation now I hear only a trace of exhaustion behind the bravado and excitement in her voice. Still, she sounded unsure when I told her how much I loved the album.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve gotten a lot of enthusiasm from people that I don’t think have ever actually listened to the record. I don’t know who to believe at this point.” When she paused I could hear the rain pounding down outside the restaurant on the other end of the phone. “I’m not supposed to say that, am I?”
“I won’t quote you,” I said. I told her about hearing “Neither Are We” on KZSU and hunting down the album, and that seemed to convince her. Then I got her started on Texas music, and I remember a cynical side of me thinking at the time that I’d hooked her. We talked about Sue Foley and Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt, and after that it was easier for her to talk about herself, about where the songs had come from and how they’d evolved in the studio, about how she liked being on the road.
“We’re getting so good,” she told me, “it’s scary. It’s like that hand-carved furniture where they didn’t have to use any glue. Everything just fits together and locks in place.”
We used up one forty-five minute side of tape before she had to go to sound check. “Thank you,” she said at the end. “I really liked talking to you. When are you coming to see us?”
“As soon as I possibly can,” I said.
“You do that,” she said. “ ’Bye now.”
The visitors
From Olympia they had a little over two days to drive to Nashville. It meant driving in shifts, Laurie even piloting the Mustang for a six-hour stretch through Wyoming and Nebraska while Skip slept in the back of the van. They WERE into their third week on the road, an emotional no-man’s land where jokes lost their punch, indigestion ran rampant, and there was not enough sleep to go around.
They hit West Nashville with enough time to spend five hours at their motel, during which Laurie dreamed of an endless highway unrolling before her. It hummed at exactly the same pitch as the air conditioner in the room. Then she and Jim and Gabe drove in the rain to Vanderbilt to spin the CD on WRVU, stopping en route to pick up two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts—even in a near coma she remembered the DJ in Flagstaff who’d complained through an entire interview about her failure to bring food.
By the time she got to sound check, she was so exhausted she didn’t notice that Skip was missing until they had all the gear on stage and were tuning their guitars.
“He was in the room when I went to sleep,” Chuck said. “But his car was gone when I woke up.”
“He’ll show,” Jim said. “He spent a couple of years here in the seventies. He knows his way around.”
“Probably went to see some old girlfriend or something,” Dennis said, then blushed purple. “Sorry.”
They made it through sound check, and over dinner Jim tried to configure a set list that would work in Skip’s absence. Laurie was barely listening. The headlights on the rain-streaked windows of Hardee’s made her feel like the world was melting, and her with it.
Skip arrived at the club thirty minutes before they were to go on, carrying his amp and guitar. He dug a beer out of the plastic garbage can full of ice in the dressing room and took a long pull.
“You said sound checks and gigs,” Laurie reminded him. “No dog and pony shows, but you promised me gigs and sound checks.”
“Really? I said sound checks too?”
She saw then that he had been drinking for hours, that the alcohol had already reddened his eyes and subtly tilted his balance. “Forget it,” she said. “Can you play?”
“What do you mean, can I play? Of course I can play.” He took another drink and said, “You know I would never fuck up a gig.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know that one. How does it go?”
She left him there and went for a look at the house. The club had red carpeting and red velvet curtains along one wall—no windows, just curtains. It was too much red and it made her feel like a bull in an arena. It was then, when she least wanted or expected it, that she saw Mark Ardrey.
He was sitting in a red vinyl booth with three men, all of them in their forties, all in jea
ns and boots, all wearing various combinations of T-shirts, athletic jackets, ball caps, facial hair, and pony tails. She tried, too late, to fade into the shadows; Ardrey had spotted her and was waving her over.
The three were a producer, an A&R man, and a regional VP from General’s Nashville offices. Laurie had trouble telling them apart.
“We love the record,” one of them said, and another said, “I’m totally a fan.” The third held up his clasped hands and grinned at her.
“Thank you,” Laurie said. “This is kind of a surprise.”
“Got to keep tabs on my future Grammy winners,” Ardrey said. “Besides, I’ve got a surprise for you.” He got a video cassette out of the briefcase at his feet and handed it to her.
“ ‘Angel Dust?’ ”
“You got it.”
“How does it look?”
“I expect an MTV Video Award at the very least. I’m completely serious. I don’t want to brag or anything, since using Patrice was my idea, but this is easily the greatest video in the history of the form.”
She nodded, holding the video with both hands, feeling awkward to be standing while they all sat in front of her, as if she’d been accused of something, and at the same time wanting desperately to be alone in a hotel room with the tape and a VCR.
“So,” Ardrey said, “how’s the road treating you?”
“It’s good,” she said. “We’re getting really tight.” She thought of Skip, drunk in the dressing room. “Really together, I mean. Wait till you see us.” She made her excuses and went to tell the band.
Skip was the first to say anything. “Is Egan out there?”
She thought the VP had in fact been named Egan.
“Christ,” Skip said. “Tone-deaf, brain-dead, corporate ass-kissing motherfucker. It’s because of him that Clay Dick stole my advance.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Laurie said. “Here all this time I’d thought it was my fault.” She was startled to discover what she was capable of saying when she was tired, and it made her afraid to get in front of a microphone. Nonetheless it was time. “Let’s go,” she said.
Skip wobbled momentarily on the steps up to the stage. Other than that, and his playing somewhat more loudly and somewhat less in tune than usual, the booze didn’t seem to affect him. The Vanderbilt kids, of which there were a pretty good number for a Tuesday night, didn’t mind the roughness and, all in all, Laurie thought, it was not bad for the first night after a twenty-five-hundred-mile drive.
They were the final band of the evening, and the company table made enough noise to bring them back for an encore. Afterward Laurie sent Jim and Gabe to schmooze while she stayed behind to help Chuck pack. As they carried a load to the van Chuck said, “Um, I can sleep on the floor with Jim and Gabe and Dennis, no problem. If you and Skip need, you know, privacy or something.”
“I appreciate the thought,” Laurie told him, “but I have this feeling it won’t be necessary.”
It wasn’t. Skip helped with the loadout one-handed, a beer always in the other, and once the trailer was full and padlocked, he put an extra bottle in each side pocket of his leather jacket and started back out to the parking lot.
“You’re not going to stick around?” Laurie asked, regretting the question as soon as it was out.
“The sound checks are unresolved, but even you admitted I don’t have to do dog and pony shows.”
“I won’t be long. And if you wait I could drive you to the motel.”
“I know we settled that one, too. I don’t have to answer to you or anybody about how I spend my free time. Or who I spend it with.”
“This isn’t about answering to anybody, this is about whether you’re in any condition to drive.”
“I’ll tell you something. I’ve been driving drunk for longer than you’ve been alive, and there’s a secret to it. Concentration. You can be as drunk as you want and do anything you want to. Drive, play guitar, screw, anything. You just have to focus on it and don’t try to do anything else at the same time. If you’re driving, don’t try to light a cigarette. Playing guitar, don’t try to dance.”
It was as if, Laurie thought, he’d been trying to drown some nasty little scorpion creature inside him with all that alcohol, and it kept swimming up to the top. She saw there was no stopping him. “Be careful,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, and walked away.
Nobody’s angel
She endured an hour or so with the industry types, despite her overwhelming desire to look at the video, despite Egan’s constantly putting his hands on her, despite Ardrey’s sulky complaints that she wasn’t adequately happy to see him. Finally they got away, and in the van on the way to the Motel 6 in West Nashville, she pulled the video tape out of her purse and told the others what it was.
They rented a VCR in a black plastic suitcase from the front desk, and as they all walked to Dennis’s room, she scanned the parking lot in vain for Skip’s Mustang. Gabe caught her looking but then wouldn’t meet her eyes. I don’t care where he is, Laurie told herself. It doesn’t matter.
She sat on the floor in front of the TV while Jim set up the machine. The others sprawled across the beds, hitting each other with pillows and complaining about the lack of popcorn and candy, which led to an argument between Jim and Dennis on the correct spelling of Jujubees. “Shut up!” Laurie finally told them. “It’s starting.”
It was very grainy, and it went back and forth between color and black and white to no apparent purpose, something that had always annoyed Laurie disproportionately. It opened with footage of the rehearsal, followed by quick, extreme-angle shots of equipment sliding into the rear of the van, all intercut with street footage of a girl and three boys in their early- to mid-teens. The girl wore a loose T-shirt and torn jeans and it disturbed Laurie to see Patrice set her up as an object of desire.
The video cut to Laurie starting the first verse in the passenger seat of the van, looking as tired as she must actually have been, because she didn’t remember filming it.
Next came the shots of the band onstage, again looking haggard, alternating with scenes of the girl in the audience, being hit on by a sleazy businessman in a suit. During the bridge she goes berserk and attacks him, which, Laurie thought, finally explained the commotion in the audience during the shoot. For the coda the girl and her friends got thrown out of the Whiskey, and Patrice cut back and forth between the girl walking away, bloody but unbowed, and Laurie standing exhausted by the stage door of the Whiskey while on the soundtrack her voice sang, “Nobody’s angel tonight…not daddy’s, not yours, not anybody’s angel tonight.” The very end was lost in the band’s own wild applause.
After three times through she decided she liked it perhaps too much and retired to the other room to lie awake for another two hours, wondering, if I were MTV, what would I think? If I were a thirteen-year-old boy? If I were Newt Gingrich?
It was a feeling like rolling down the runway in a plane, the engines revving higher and higher, the wheels crying out to let go of the ground. Eventually she slept in spite of it.
Fragile enterprise
That was the high point of a week, from Nashville on Tuesday afternoon to Bloomington, Indiana, on Saturday night, that turned into an ordeal by fire. Breakage became epidemic, from guitar strings to a bass drum head that had to mended with duct tape to the air conditioner on the van.
Wednesday was Knoxville, a thin crowd, a surly manager, a drunken Skip who made threats in order to collect their pay and then disappeared. Laurie found her internal clock hopelessly scrambled and stepped out of her room at 3 AM to study the panorama of gas stations and fast food along the I-40 access road. Instead she saw Jim, who she thought was in her room asleep, at a pay phone at the end of the motel building, crying.
She waited for him to hang up and then she walked over to meet him. “Sorry,” was the first thing out of his mouth.
“For what?”
“I didn’t want to use the phone in the room because I
didn’t want you guys to see me…”
“Jim. What’s the deal?”
“I miss Molly. I miss Sam. I miss the house. I miss mowing the yard, for God’s sake. I miss Molly’s stupid cat shoving me out of bed at night. I even miss four hours a day of printed circuit design.” He dragged the back of one hand under his nose, which was leaking into his orange mustache. “I’m too old for this. My heart’s not in it anymore.”
“Come on, you’re not too old. Skip’s doing it, and he’s what, three or four times older than all the rest of us put together.”
“Have you looked at Skip recently? He’s falling apart too. This whole fragile enterprise is crumbling all around us.”
“Jim, do you want out? I don’t want you to go, but I’m not going to hold you here against your will.” The words took all her internal warmth with them as they left her mouth.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Can I sleep on it?”
“I hope so,” she said. “It would be nice if one of us could sleep.”
Dining car
Two nights later, in a theater called the Clifton Center in Louisville, the thing that had been incubating inside Skip began to peck its way free. It came late in the set when someone in the depths of the comfortably seated audience called out for one of Skip’s songs, “Orchids For Your Smile.”
The title conjured late nights from Laurie’s childhood when she would find her father listening to the stereo as she stumbled back from the bathroom—the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, Donovan’s Sunshine Superman, and “Tender Hours” and “Orchids For Your Smile” by Skip Shaw—and sometimes she would lie down in the hall to listen and she would fall asleep there, waking up in her father’s arms as he carried her to bed. “Go back to sleep, Little Rat,” he would say as he tucked her in, because, like one of the rats that the Piper piped from Hamlin, she would follow music anywhere.
