As the train rolled into the Dusseldorf station later that afternoon, I decided I would return to Como before the weekend was over.
The air was wet and warm as I opened the train’s door. Jake was there to greet me. I handed him the four guitars one at a time, grabbed my satchel, stepped to the ground, let my hand be engulfed by one of his. He wore gray flannel trousers tucked into leather boots that looked very soft, very comfortable. His leather jacket was form-fitted to broad shoulders and a relatively small waist. The zipper was open far enough to show muscles straining at the fabric of a thin silk T-shirt. His face was a black stone mask, his eyes hidden behind wrap-around shades. Passengers leaving or boarding the train skirted far around him and commented to one another about his size.
“Mario’s just finishing up a session at the studio where he works,” Jake said. “He’ll be meeting us at the place.”
I nodded as though I understood. “Does it ever bother you, people staring like that?”
“Not anymore,” he replied, reaching for one of my cases. “You been working on those songs I sent?”
“Every day.”
“Good man.” He pointed with his jaw. “Car’s out back. What say we take the side exit down there.”
Every other day I had received a cassette from Jake, each painstakingly labelled “Set One—Intro and Lead-In,” “Set Two—Hard Rock,” and so on. The more I listened to his songs, the easier it became to set aside the disturbing emotions brought up by the lyrics and concentrate on the music. I had spent the past eleven days playing out the final nights in the club, memorizing my parts from the cassette, and fighting with myself over this decision to come to Germany. Most nights I had gone to bed trying to make up excuses to free myself from this promise and still let me keep Mario as my friend. By the time the train had left Como I was down to just one reason for going—because I said I would.
“Our place is about ten blocks from here,” Jake said. His van was a new Mercedes MB-10, with a back area tall enough for me to stand up in. The floors, walls and ceiling were padded with multicolored layers of old packing quilts.
“You’ve got to be real careful to get receipts for everything to do with the band,” Jake instructed. “At the end of each month give everything to Hans, our man on horns. He keeps the books.”
As we drove, places and buildings rose from my memory like shadows in a dream. Jake left the main road and began winding his way past a series of factories and tumble-down warehouses. “Mario is sound engineer. Man’s responsible for all sound checks, settin’ up and tearin’ down. Lights too. Everybody follows his orders before and after each concert.”
Jake stopped in front of an old warehouse covered in soot and decorated with letters so faded they could not be read. The sidewalk was cracked and pitted, the street threaded by rusting rail-lines and clumps of weeds. He pushed open a metal door imbedded in a larger garage door and we went inside.
High overhead burned a string of industrial lights, and above them loomed girders and dark shapes. The floor was dotted with old oil stains, but it was clean. The temperature was much cooler than outside. The back third of the warehouse was sectioned off by a wall of fiberboard with two doors set thirty feet apart. From behind the left-hand door came muffled noises.
“Shoulda seen this place when we started,” Jake said, and pointed toward the right-hand entrance. “Let’s take a look in there first.”
He opened the cheap prefab door, said, “Our practice room. We’ve sweated blood over this place.”
The floor was covered with layer upon layer of old carpet. The top layer was a dozen oriental rugs, replete with holes and raveled edges. It was a wondrous bazaar of colors.
“Took almost every cent we had,” Jake said. “Like to see this extra warehouse space someday be a little Bible study classroom or maybe a small gathering place for young people. All that’s gonna have to wait. Can’t afford much else right now.”
Two great stacks of speakers stood like sentinels in each corner of the playing area. Fronting them was a collection of wind instruments, each on a little silver stand—three saxophones of various sizes, a flute, a clarinet, a trumpet, a flugelhorn, and a trombone. Behind them, to the right of the drums, stood double congas almost four feet high. A slender metal stand sprouted beside the congas, holding a dozen pencil-thin tubular bells. Against the wall rose shelves holding every imaginable percussion instrument. The drums just seemed to go on and on, a vast array of cymbals and silver-plated shapes. To their left stood an upright piano facing the back wall. In front of it were four keyboards stationed on a special A-frame that stacked them like hi-tech steps.
The whole arena was encircled by a ring of microphones. In front of the mike stands squatted four odd-angled playbacks, the speaker boxes used to direct music toward the stage so the musicians could hear it. Two sets of professional lights and a third stand for the dual spots were stacked over to one side.
“Some of the places where we play don’t have their own lighting,” Jake said. “We got these for free. Bought the PA system from a rental agency that was upgrading. We took some time looking at the mixing board, so they finally said if we went for the whole deal they’d throw in the lights.”
Next to the spotlights, near the back wall and facing the playing area, were the sound and light mixing boards. A multitude of jacks sprouted from the sound board’s back, leading into a trunk of cables that snaked along the floor toward the instruments. For each jack there were several slide bars and an array of tuner knobs.
Jake ran a hand along the board’s face. “Like Mario says, this baby’ll make a sneeze sound like the Hallelujah Chorus.”
The outer door clanged open and quiet voices echoed in the distance. A couple of men entered the playing room. The elder was almost bald and had streaks of gray in his carefully tended beard. He wore a flannel workshirt, dungarees, and sneakers. His hazel eyes wore a look of gentle inquiry. The younger was tall and lanky, with curly blond hair and the enormous blue eyes of an eternal innocent.
“These are our horn players,” Jake said. “Karl and Hans. Guys, like you to meet Gianni.”
“Nice to meet you, kid,” Karl, the bearded one, said.
The blond gave a shy smile, shook hands, said nothing.
“Hans is our token mute,” Jake said. “Only time he talks is when he’s singin’ or talkin’ about the Gospel.”
“Same thing,” Hans said, smiling again in that quiet way.
“Hans is studyin’ religion at the local university. Don’t ask me why. Don’t never say enough to make a halfway preacher. Karl’s a social worker in real life. Works with handicapped kids.”
Karl asked, “You speak German?”
“Not in almost ten years.”
“Mario’s told us a lot about you. I’m looking forward to hearing you play.”
“C’mon, Gianni,” Jake said. “Want you to meet the others.”
He led me around the mixing boards, back through another prefab door. We entered a second room, this one lit by old table lamps with tattered shades and lined with comfortable-looking furniture. One back corner had a small kitchenette; the second held a sleeping alcove with curtains drawn around wall bunks. The floor was carpeted as the practice room, the walls decorated with posters announcing revivals and concerts by groups I had never heard of. Shelves held books and videos and CD’s and albums. Musical instruments and sheet music were strewn everywhere. A large television flickered against the left wall; beside it was a very impressive stereo set.
Mario was lounging at one end of the sofa dressed in a tattered T-shirt and sweat-stained jeans. “Salve, Maestro.” He looked very tired. “I’d get up but I think maybe if I did I’d fall over. Spent the whole night at the studio working on a remix.”
The man next to Mario had rust-colored hair clamped to his head in kinky curls. He sprawled on the sofa with arms and legs stretched out at unlikely angles. It reminded me of the way a rag doll looks after being tossed aside. I had neve
r seen anybody so relaxed.
His attention remained glued to the television. He said to no one in particular, “Something’s waiting just around the corner.”
“Limp dude with the busted fingers there is Pipo,” Jake rumbled. “Percussion. Late of Miami, Rio, Dallas, and New York.”
“Don’t forget Los Angeles, man,” Pipo said, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “Land of the midnight breakfast. Home to every idol on earth. Only place in the world where if it snowed people’d be out waving hundred dollar bills at the sky.”
“Pipo’s hooked on thrillers,” Mario said to me. “Especially the old black-and-white ones.”
“What’s his problem?” Pipo complained. “I mean, he oughtta know some serious business is coming down.”
“How come?” Mario winked at me, played the straight man. “The girl just said she was gonna marry him.”
“That don’t mean diddle.” Pipo waved a hand with three heavily bandaged fingers at the screen. “Listen to the music. Anybody with sense is gonna know when they start playing that heavy music it’s time for the ax. That dude must be a fool. How come he’s just walking straight into the mess is what I want to know.”
Jake asked, “Think maybe you could say hello to your new lead guitarist?”
“Yep, there it is,” Pipo replied. “Major trouble. Dude’s gonna catch it now.”
Jake said to me, “Man likes to think he’s our problem child.”
Pipo stretched elaborately tattooed arms over his head, gave me a bored once-over. “You really hot stuff like they say?”
I shook my head. “I just play a little guitar, is all.”
He dropped his arms like a puppet whose strings were cut, turned his attention back to the television. “At least you don’t blow your own horn.”
Jake shook his head, gave a little, mmm-hmm. He said, “That’s some greetin’ for a new band member.”
Mario gave a drawn-out groan and pushed himself erect. He smiled tiredly at me, said, “You about ready to warm up, Maestro?”
Once we were back in the practice room, Jake said, “Our lead guitarist wasn’t always an easy dude to be around.”
“What Jake is saying,” Mario explained, “is that he can’t tell you what he thinks of that guy and still face himself in the mirror.”
“Set a lotta people’s teeth on edge. Used it as a shield, ’cause he just didn’t have the talent of the rest of the group.”
“Amy said if he put half as much energy into being a better musician as he did in being difficult, we’d have had a superstar on our hands,” Mario said.
“Couldn’t keep up with the rest of the band on a lot of things,” Jake said.
“Pipo called him our divine brake,” Mario said. “The guy just loved that.”
“Heat was up pretty high for a while,” Jake said. “Especially for Pipo.”
“Give them a chance to get to know you, Maestro,” Mario said, flipping switches and adjusting knobs on the mixing board. “They’ll come around.”
“I’ve got a little something planned,” Jake said, a hint of a smile touching his eyes. “That is, if you don’t mind sort of an initiation.”
“I don’t mind.”
Mario introduced me to Lothar, their keyboard player from Bern. He was a tangle-haired study in denim—trousers, shirt, jacket, and blue denim sneakers. His eyes were all over the room, wandering and touching everywhere, never staying anywhere for long. Lothar worked with him sometimes in the studio, Mario told me. That was where the group had first come together. The man nodded, shook my hand, said nothing.
One by one they all came in and took their positions. I set up beside Lothar as Jake directed. Amy arrived and came over to greet me with a warm hug. “How’ve you been, Gianni?”
“Okay,” I said, glad to see her again. “This room is great. Very professional.”
“Just another sweatshop, kid,” Pipo said, tightening the heads on his congas. “Whips and chains are outside.”
She grasped me by the elbow and led me to the drums. “Gianni, I want you to meet Sameh.”
I took in the Egyptian’s toffee-colored skin, the dark eyes and hair, the murmured hello, the calm power, the swift handshake. He turned back to pulling the mike-booms down into position around his drums.
Pipo clapped a hand down hard, and the room reverberated to the conga’s thunder. “Mario, you found out how to work that thing yet?”
“My gear’s working fine,” Mario said, not looking up. “Give me something, Pipo.”
“Blow you away, baby.” Pipo began to beat out a steady salsa rhythm. As he played, the muscles and veins on his arms and neck stood out distinctly. The tattered bandages on the first three fingers of each hand marked the point that struck the congas.
Mario fiddled with various switches until the power of Pipo’s congas started thumping through the PA and into my chest.
“Okay, Hans,” Mario called.
The blond young man walked over, picked up the trumpet, approached his mike, began to play in time to Pipo’s beat. He ran up the scale, drawing out his high notes, fell down so low the music became a sputter, slid back into his run. He was very good. Mario worked with both hands; the trumpet’s sound welled up and up, filling the chamber. It was fresh, authentic, powerful.
“Your turn, Karl,” Mario yelled.
Karl picked up the alto sax, quickly checked the tuning, and swung into the melody played by Hans. Without a pause, without a false note, he just blended in, melded with the trumpet, then soared off on a road of his own. Mario drew his sound up until it matched and blended.
Dancing in place behind his board, Mario lifted both hands over his head and hooked pointed fingers down toward the drums.
Sameh drove through a rapid-fire trill that started on the snare and took him over all the drums within the space of a dozen heartbeats. His beat was solid, sure, tremendously powerful. The cymbals crashed and chimed, the bass danced a staccato beat; his sticks were a solid blur.
Mario called over, “You wanna hook up, Gianni?”
“Naw, wait a minute,” Jake said loudly from the doorway.
The music ended sharply. I liked that. It was the surest signal of a professional group. No jockeying for power, no running solos on after the others had stopped, no getting lost in the thrill of being the center of attention. When the leader said stop, they stopped. Sharp and clean, without dissention.
Jake looked at me. “You been practicin’ hard?”
“Yes.” I ignored the attention that turned my way.
“You learned all the cassettes I sent you?”
I nodded.
Jake looked around, made sure the room was listening. “How well?”
I thought about that. “I can play all the songs on the cassettes in order. And I know all the solos.”
“Just the guitar solos, or for all the other instruments, too?”
“All the solos.” There was no need to say the only reason I had learned them was boredom. With the album work postponed, there had been nothing else to fill the time.
“Okay, lemme ask you something,” Jake said. “You know the songs well enough to change the key and still play them exactly the same?”
“Yes.” Of course.
“Well,” Jake said. “What if I wanted to change the tempo—maybe take a love song and make it into rhythm and blues?”
Amy walked over, her smile a shield against all the eyes focused on me. “What Daddy Jake is asking is whether you can help fit a song around my voice.”
“I’d like to try,” I said. “It’s a pretty standard studio technique.”
“Maybe for you,” Pipo muttered.
“Plug in your guitar, Gianni,” Jake said. “I think it’s time to show ’em what we got here.”
“Use the cord there by Lothar, Maestro,” Mario said.
I selected the Stratocaster. It sounded like Jake was after power. I plugged myself in, tuned to Lothar’s keyboard, heard Mario draw me up and out of the
PA.
Jake asked, “What is the first song on the Set Two tape?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know any of the titles.”
“That’s right, I forgot,” Jake drawled, and casually raked the room with his gaze. “You never heard any of this music before, have you?”
“No.” I took a long time tuning, tried a couple of brief runs, listened to the way the room echoed and absorbed the sound, tried to tell myself it was just like working in a new studio. Just proving myself again. Nothing more.
Jake turned to Pipo. In that lazy rumble he said, “Tell you what, man. Why don’t you just take that song, change the tempo to a Latin or salsa or something and really jazz it up, you know? Take the basic tune and just do whatever you want to it.”
Pipo shot a glance my way, shrugged. “Why not?”
Lothar asked, “What about the key?”
“Yeah, the key.” Jake’s eyes glimmered humor as he glanced toward Amy. “Don’t matter much about no key, does it? You just play whichever key you want, however you please. Think you can handle that?”
Lothar thought it over, leaned over the keyboard, started playing two steps above the key on the cassette. I would have no problem changing over.
Lothar stopped, asked, “How’s that?”
“All right by me,” Jake said. “You got any problems with that, Gianni?”
I shook my head, understanding what he wanted.
Jake turned to Pipo, nodded. “All right, my man. Hit it.”
“But I haven’t told him the key yet,” Lothar said.
Jake didn’t turn around. “Hit it, Pipo.”
Pipo raised his eyes to the ceiling, made patterns in the air above his congas as he listened to the music in his head, lowered his hands, and pounded out a strong rock salsa.
Jake gave Sameh the nod, and he swung in on drums. It was tight, polished, high-powered.
Jake turned to me, mouthed, Hit it. I did as he said, adding the dischords to match the way Lothar had played. I began putting in half notes to accent the salsa beat, forgetting all about the novelty of the place, the eyes of the people.
The Maestro Page 21
