Millions for a Song

by André Vanasse

  He raises his hands like he can’t do anything about it and has no desire to discuss the matter further. As far as he’s concerned, the case is closed. So he changes the subject. “Listen, I forgot to tell you I’m off to London in a few days’ time. I’ll be there for four or five weeks. Catherine will look after your contracts while I’m gone. She’ll mail them out to you. You’re still good for another three weeks. If things slow down, it’s no big deal. For the past year, you’ve barely had a single weekend off. A bit of a rest will do you good.”

  I agree. Our career, since that’s what this is, has taken over our lives. We never stop, not even for a second. Two or three weeks off would be a welcome break. We could start writing more songs, too.

  We’ll have to anyway, since our fans are starting to get tired of our material. For once, I think Tom’s right. Especially since we’ve paid back the amount owed for the CD by now. And we don’t really need the money ...

  Curious as always and forever on the lookout for new opportunities that might suit our band, I ask him what he’ll be doing in London.

  “That’s my business, my man.”

  “Hey, just asking—I wasn’t trying to stick my nose into your business. You’ve been to London twice in the past six months. I just wondered if it had anything to do with us, with Nexxtep.”

  “If something pans out, I’ll let you know.”

  The message comes in loud and clear. I shut my trap. Tom gets to his feet and waves. “See you in a month or so. Till then, take care, my man.”

  Tom may seem like the consummate salesman, always brimming with confidence, but this time I get the feeling he’s uneasy around me. Why? Who the hell knows ...

  We, too, are U2

  four

  We’ve been on edge for three weeks now. We haven’t heard anything from Tom. He was supposed to be back on October 12th. It’s now the 30th. No calls. No sign of life. Nothing but silence. As for Catherine, his secretary, she’s impossible to get hold of.

  Not surprisingly, we have no contracts for the coming weeks. At first, that suited us just fine. Now it’s a drag. Time off is great, but you can have too much of a good thing. We’re pacing like caged lions. But what can we do?

  To keep busy, we’ve written some new songs. Five in all and one in particular, “Limited Sensations,” that has the makings of a hit. The tempo is great. Really rocking. I’m not unhappy with the lyrics either.

  With John Wayne

  Riding a horse

  With James Dean

  Driving a car

  Looks different

  But it’s all the same

  Just like you

  Just like me

  Don’t care about you

  Not like it’s true

  Only want to have their way

  They always pass on through

  (chorus)

  They will die in pain

  Unsatisfied

  And nothing can explain

  Never knowing why.

  So we keep rehearsing in my basement, waiting for Tom’s phone call. We’re worried. Why the silence? Has Tom decided to ditch us? If so, why? He’s got nothing to complain about. We’ve been with him for a year. We’ve put on more than a hundred shows. A pretty impressive track record if you ask me.

  As for him, he got (actually took) his twenty-five per cent as set out in the contract. Plus the $6,000 for the CD. He can’t possibly have lost money on us.

  We’re a far cry from the gloomy predictions he made when we first talked about making a CD. There’s no denying that Tom’s a shrewd businessman. In a few short weeks, he trained an impressive number of roaming student teams recruited from the different high schools, and gave them the job of selling our CD for a fifteen per cent commission.

  Going by the numbers for my school, our CD sold not in the hundreds but in the thousands. All the more likely since none of us was able to verify the number of CDs produced. One thousand, two, five?

  I’m not trying to say we’re Tom’s cash cows or anything, but I’m pretty sure he’s made at least $20,000 off us. As a matter of fact, the gears ran smoothly while he himself had next to nothing to do.

  So how to explain his disappearing act? Is he following some hot tip? Has he gone bankrupt? Anything is possible. How to know? Only he can tell us ...

  Today we’re gonna party! We’re heading over together to see U2’s show. A big deal. It’s going to be an awesome scene with a sound system loud enough to burst fifty thousand fans’ eardrums.

  So as to get our fill, our band bought the best tickets in the place. Crazy expensive. But Montreal must be full of crazy fans these days because the show sold out! And black market prices are demented. Scalpers are raking in the dough. Five times the face value for floor seats. And people are snapping them up. It’s insane.

  There’s no way we’d ever sell our tickets. Even if we were offered $1,000, we’d say no! We didn’t spend a night sleeping outside for nothing. That’s just what we did: we camped out overnight to be sure to get the best seats as soon as the box office opened.

  The show starts the minute we walk inside. Have you ever seen fifty thousand people crammed together? It’s mayhem! Sometimes it feels like the place will give under all the pressure, collapsing into a cloud of dust.

  The crowd’s excitement holds us captive. There’s a lot of aggression in the air, no one really knows why. It wouldn’t take much for a rampage to start. You can feel it. You can see it. Everyone’s holding their breath.

  At the same time, they’re all hoping for a bit of drama. Everyone wants to witness something out of the ordinary. A riot. To be able to say once the storm dies down, “I was there. It was terrifying! In the space of a few minutes, the powderkeg exploded. There were fireworks everywhere. Real dynamite. Everyone throwing punches. Blood everywhere. People shouting. Girls screaming. Blades glinting in the dark. It was wild.”

  Fortunately, that’s not what happens. There is no riot, but you can feel the electricity in the air. Zap, zap. We’re all on edge, feverish, agitated, waiting for U2 to whip the crowd into a frenzy, carry us away with its beat. The band had better start soon or the whole place will lift off into the air like a helium balloon.

  There’s already some pushing and shoving going on in the crowd. A few fights have broken out. The police intervene. Guys and girls with frozen smiles, blank stares. Stoned out of their minds. Floating above the others.

  Then the four of them appear, superb, electric, on the huge lit stage. With a single cry, the crowd goes nuts. Sending them flying across the stage. Like crickets. Kangaroos. Gurus. Bono runs toward us, his arm clasped over his heart.

  He’s got a broken forearm, but that doesn’t cramp his style. He’s as frenzied as the others. What am I saying, more than the others! Bono, the one, the only, the never to be forgotten, the god of rock. My idol. I’m so into him I would happily break my own arm against a cement ledge. Without hesitating. Without thinking. What can I say, I’m crazy about the guy. No one is his equal.

  They’re all dressed in black. Leather boots and jean jackets. Bono has his hat on. His hair peeking out underneath. Only his arm in a sling stands out against all the black. A great white cry. It’s truly something to see.

  Larry Mullen settles in behind the drums. Thunder straight from Ireland. Bouncing, rolling, unfurling everywhere. Ricocheting off bodies and walls. An avalanche of sound. Then hundreds of tumbling stones. Tom Thumb stones. The crowd’s swept away by the magic.

  Now The Edge, the guitarist. A king. He makes his strings keen to the four winds. A thousand drops of lead dripping from above. Stretching, twisting, melting, scattering. He launches into a supreme lament. A broken heart. My eyes fill. I’m mesmerized.

  Then it’s over to Adam Clayton, the bass player, to make us quake. His notes rumble deep in my ribcage. Like he’s dredging the music up from
the bowels of the earth. A threatening rumble like a coming earthquake. The ground moves beneath my feet.

  I can’t describe the high I feel. And to think the show hasn’t even started yet! What will it be like two hours from now?

  It was paradise up until the moment Bono, pausing for effect, cried out, thrilled and proud of his offering guaranteed to make his Quebec audience roar, “And now, for all the Quebecers, a song written and composed by one of your own, Mr. Tom Paradis, ‘Live in the Dark.’ ”

  We all stand there stunned. Me, Mélanie, Bruno, and Jean-François. Looking at each other, incredulous. I cannot describe just how hard my heart’s pounding in my chest. When U2 starts playing the first bars, I discover, we discover, that we’ve been conned by that lowlife Tom.

  We’re torn. We listen to our song interpreted in a whole new way, but with such fire that we’re crazy proud and crazy furious. Someone else getting credit for this song, our song. We want to cry, “Stop! Stop! There’s been a mistake! It’s not Tom Paradis, but Mélanie, Jean-François, Bruno, and Alexandre from the band Nexxtep who wrote that song!”

  Of course, there’s nothing we can do. So we listen right through to the end of the song. We see, we hear the crowd go wild, knowing it was meant for us. We’re so proud!

  The next minute, fury and humiliation set in, and we’ll stop at nothing to track down Tom Paradis, that creep!

  We can’t even make it to the end of the show. Bruno’s so furious that, for a minute, I think he just might smash everything in sight. He’s crimson, clenching his fists, swearing like a madman, “I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill him,” over and over.

  I’m sure he would too if he could get his hands on Tom Paradis. Bruno’s like that: a shy guy who flares up at the slightest spark. Watch out when he loses it. There’s trouble ahead.

  He was in a fight with a guy from Brébeuf once. A good thing I happened to be there, too, or Bruno would have beaten him to a bloody pulp. I had to hold him back with all my might to keep him from caving in the guy’s ribs with his violent kicks. The poor guy lay on the ground, his face already all bloody, but Bruno was blind with rage. He was beyond reason. It was like he’d lost touch with reality. Thankfully, I managed to stop him.

  I took him to a restaurant to calm him down. We ordered coffee. He was shaking so hard he couldn’t hold his coffee cup. He kept saying the same thing over and over, “I’d have killed him, I’d have killed him … If you hadn’t been there, I would have killed him for sure.” Shaking all the while.

  After a good ten minutes, he calmed down. He started to worry about the other guy. He wondered if he hadn’t done him some serious harm. He felt guilty. “What can I say—when someone provokes me, I don’t know what comes over me. I lose my mind. If I’d had a wooden stick or a steel rod, I’m sure I’d have busted his skull.”

  He started dreading his violent flare-ups. “You know, Alex, I’m scared. Sometimes I wonder if I won’t kill someone in a fit of rage and end up in prison.”

  Bruno started drowning in the darkness, feeling guilty about everything. He hated not being able to stay in control. Like the blushing he seemed incapable of stopping. Everytime the red crept up, it totally threw him.

  He’d be so worked up about blushing, he’d be at a loss for words. He felt ridiculous, couldn’t stand the thought someone might be making fun of him—which, naturally, everyone did, and cruelly, too. He felt diminished, didn’t want to see anyone anymore, hid out in his room, refused to go out for days at a time.

  After his long descent into hell, he’d reappear, just like that, as though nothing had happened. He’d be his old self again, full of energy, funny as can be, ready with more of his quick comebacks.

  I rediscovered then the Bruno I loved: imaginative, creative, tuned into great stuff, the friend who introduced me to Apollinaire’s Alcools, Anne Hébert’s Children of the Black Sabbath, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues. The friend I loved more than all the others because I knew what a great guy he was and that one day, he’d do great things.

  Bruno belongs to the breed of creators. I’m proud to be his friend ....

  But back to the problem at hand. Right after U2’s rendition, we head out of the stadium to hold an emergency meeting at our usual haunt, Katarak Souvlaki.

  After a long discussion, we conclude there’s only one solution to the whole business: hire a lawyer and sue Tom Paradis.

  Everyone suggests that Bruno ask his dad to take on the case before the courts. To avoid having to pay legal fees. It’s a good idea, but Bruno’s dad works for a firm that specializes in taxation.

  Bruno suggests we call on the services of an expert instead, and it just so happens he knows someone who fits the bill. “An old friend of my dad’s, Laurent Biron, specializes in the field of film royalties. I see him all the time when he comes over for dinner. I can guarantee he’d be happy to take on our case. For a reasonable fee too, since it’s his good friend’s son doing the asking.”

  Then, with the utmost confidence, he says, “Just so you know, Tom Paradis had better watch his back because there’s no one like my dad’s friend when it comes to tough negotiators.”

  As far as we’re concerned, the whole thing’s already in the bag.

  We’ve been keyed up for days now. Mr. Biron’s take on our case was not as promising as we hoped. We thought the hard part would be tracking down Tom Paradis. Truth be told, it was child’s play. Mr. Biron simply sent a summons to Tom Paradis through U2’s manager, asking for his contact information.

  The manager wasn’t keen on seeing a scandal erupt over a copyright issue. So he handed over Tom Paradis’ address without a second’s hesitation.

  Since we’d had no idea where “our” manager lived, we had no way of getting hold of him before. Now, it’s a done deal. He lives in Ahuntsic, at 11591, rue Georges-Baril to be exact, in a ranch-house style home. (Me, Mélanie, Jean-François, and Bruno went snooping, only to come to the conclusion that managing bands must be quite lucrative.)

  But that’s not the problem. The blow we took doesn’t come from the fact that he’s rich, but from learning that Tom Paradis swears he’s the true rights holder for “Live in the Dark.” He even forwarded as proof an “official” document sent directly from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.

  When Mr. Biron received the copy of form No. 10 entitled Application for Registration of a Copyright in a Work and saw the song title, he was stunned.

  He was not happy to discover that Tom Paradis, like any good plagiarist who knows the law, had not only carefully registered the song’s title, he’d had the lyrics and music authenticated on a separate sheet by the Office.

  Faced with the documents, Mr. Biron can only concede that irreparable harm has been done to our case. “No doubt about it,” Mr. Biron says, “Tom Paradis has a real head start. He’s got proof he’s the author of ‘Live in the Dark.’” To clarify the situation for us, he adds, “You have nothing to counter his claims. The evidence he’s provided is solid since there’s no way we can call into question the government’s intellectual property rights office responsible for managing rights. That would be literally absurd ...”

  Bruno, crimson with rage, shouts, “But everyone knows we wrote that song. We can call on witnesses who’ll confirm we’re the songwriters. I know ten, twenty, thirty people who could swear under oath that ‘Live in the Dark’ belongs to us. It’s our song, not that worm Tom Paradis’!”

  A curt Mr. Biron sets Bruno straight. “Calm down, Bruno. If you can’t control yourself, I’ll have to ask you to leave my office. We can’t solve this problem by yelling and screaming. For your information, I can guarantee that the defendant’s lawyer will happily tear your witnesses’ testimony to shreds. Just singing a song doesn’t mean you wrote it. You must know that there are thousands, millions, billions of
people who sing other people’s songs.”

  Then he adds, almost sadistically, “The cards are stacked even more in his favor since the contract you signed with Tom Paradis gives him absolute freedom. He could very well have lent you some of his songs out of the goodness of his heart—don’t hit the roof, Bruno, hear me out! Why wouldn’t he, since he’s covered by his contract with you?”

  Now that he’s on a roll, he continues, “Need more proof, Bruno? Look carefully at the cover on the CD produced by Tom Paradis. Do you see anything other than copyright Tom Paradis Inc.? Do you know what that means? That Tom Paradis wrote every song on the CD.”

  He finishes off with, “You want more? I’m willing to bet he’s registered a copyright on all the songs you’re currently singing. So if you think you’ll win this case just by swearing you wrote the songs, you’re making a colossal mistake.”

  Bruno scowls, humiliated. Mr. Biron’s right. If we don’t proceed with caution, we won’t get anywhere. We’ll have to think outside the box if we want to beat Tom Paradis at his own game. He may look harmless enough, but now we know that’s not the case.

  Mr. Biron continues, “We’ll have to analyze the situation with cool heads if we want to find a way out. I believe that, among the five of us, we should be able to come up with a clue, a witness, an argument somewhere that will help us win our case.”

  Next, he tells us how he plans to proceed, “To win, we’ll have to go back over everything that’s happened, step by step, from your band’s beginnings to the moment we received the document announcing Tom Paradis’ copyright. First question: when did you form the band? The question is of the utmost importance.”

  With her memory for dates, Mélanie pipes up without hesitating, “The first time we discussed it was over the Christmas holidays, two years ago. I remember clearly, it was December 19th, my mom’s birthday.”

  “Were the songs already written at the time?”

  Since I’m the one responsible for typing out the lyrics, I know the answer. “Uh-uh. We had a slow start. A struggle even. It would usually take us a few weeks to come up with our final draft.”