Boys Keep Swinging

by Jake Shears

  “I just can’t get my mind off this.” He gestured to his foot and shook his head. “I want to be able to have fun with everybody, but I’m too distracted. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “What was the last thing they said?”

  He still didn’t know anything yet. “I’m really scared.” His face crumpled and he started to sob. I sat next to him and put an arm on his back while he cried into his hands. The bass pumped and throbbed, making the mirrors on the walls shake.

  “Look, I think it’s going to be all right,” I said. With the drugs kicking in, I thought my voice sounded hollow. “Just try to be positive.” There was a dull, sick feeling in my stomach. He wiped his face. “It’s been a long night,” I said. “We should get you to a car back to the hotel.”

  I spent the rest of the morning in Panorama Bar, pleasantly high, loving the music by DJ Boris, rubbing up on a stocky Turkish guy named Yusi. We danced together, flirted, and made out. Eventually he took me back to his place, on top of a high-rise overlooking all of East Berlin. We drew a bath and put on Chill Out by the KLF. As he held me in the bathtub, the sounds of trains, sheep bleating, and Elvis trickled around us. Before we went to sleep I put on my tacky velour purple sweatpants from Old Navy.

  “These are my Liz Taylors,” I told Yusi.

  “So what are those, then?” He pointed to my tangerine glasses. “Your Melanie Griffiths?”

  When I woke up at about 8 p.m., it was like the sun had never risen. I’d been living in the dark for days. I flew out of the old Tempelhof Airport that has since been closed down. It was beautiful and eerie, like being in some other time. I boarded the plane in a dreamlike state, remnants of the drugs still coursing through my system. Sticking my forehead to the frosty window, I wondered if this was what life was going to be now: just floating. We took off into yet another night.

  “Jason,” Mary said. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? There’s nothing to be sorry about.” It was a Thursday night, and I was home, playing Grand Theft Auto 3. When the game got intense, I would forget to blink and my contacts would go dry.

  “No, I’m a total bitch. Always whining, getting upset over nothing.” She paused and I could hear her readjust herself wherever she was sitting. “I got your song you wrote for me and I’ve listened to it about two hundred times. Jason, it’s beautiful.”

  I put my controller for the game down and sat up on my bed. “Babe, I’m so glad you like it. I wrote it just for you.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “What if I fucking hated it? Was like—this is terrible.”

  “And you were like playing it to people in Seattle and making fun of it.”

  “Even if it wasn’t about me I’d love it. It’s such a good song.”

  “Well, it’s yours.”

  That night we made a deal. If her song for any reason turned out to be a hit and made money, we would use that money to get her a gastric-bypass operation, something she’d been wanting and fantasizing about for years. But it seemed like such a far-off prospect, there would never be enough money just lying around for such a thing. I knew she saw it as one of her only ways out. There was the possibility that she could live her life like a regular person, leave her house whenever she felt like it to go on a stroll, not be stared at when she got on the bus every day.

  It was hard to imagine a healthier, happier Mary, but I knew anything was possible. It would be a huge life change, but above all else, I just wanted for her to feel like she belonged in the world, with me.

  IT WAS TIME TO FIND a drummer. Scott and I put an ad in the Village Voice and held auditions in a grim rehearsal studio in Midtown. The band and Neil were present and we had narrowed it down to two people. One was a really cute girl with shaggy hair and a massive smile. She played hard and straight and bounced along with the kick. Her energy was contagious, but it wasn’t the right fit. The other drummer we were considering was a guy named Patrick Seacor. He was Lower East Side New York personified, like he had walked straight out of Scorsese’s After Hours. Cute and blond, somewhere in his thirties, he wore a colorful scarf and a beret. His drumming was loose and cool, his face pouty and unbothered. We asked him to join the band.

  Hearing our songs with live drums made a huge difference, black-and-white into color, mono into stereo. We were now a bona fide rock and roll band. My fears of being pigeonholed dissipated for the time being. Even though we would carry the electro label for a couple of years, people would now see for themselves something more than just a track act.

  Patrick had his own low-ceilinged rehearsal space, directly under the Pink Pony in the Lower East Side. It was subterranean and dark, full of abalone shells, tacky ashtrays, and broken Christmas lights. But it was cozy, the perfect spot for us to rehearse a few times a week. The tangled cords and stacked, hissing speakers kept it makeshift. The place, as well as our playing, was a lovable mess, but we were fortunate to have it, as well as each other. None of us were spectacular musicians, but as long as we kept hacking away at it, I knew we could get good.

  We were still trying to sort out our looks. Derek let me borrow one of his Paul Smith suits. My mom, in town to see one of the shows, took me shopping one day at Century 21 and bought me a purple leather vest by Marc Jacobs. The price had been slashed. My mime outfit always got me by in a pinch, when I didn’t have any spare money.

  The last time I had been down on the farm with my parents, I’d raced through a copy of Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business I’d bought at a Barnes & Noble. The different facets seemed complicated and I was overwhelmed by the commissions, the agents, managers, and lawyers. There were so many ways for a band to get in trouble. One bad move or faulty cog in the wheel could fuck everything up.

  There was now interest from a couple more record labels in London. A man named Seb Chew from Polydor had been showing up in town to see us play gigs at the Knitting Factory and Joe’s Pub. He told me my one dance move was getting old really fast. It was kind of a mix between the Charleston and the Mashed Potato. But he was right, I needed to expand my boogie. Overall I didn’t mind when I got critiques of the show. This was entertainment and I wanted it to be as effective as possible. It was tough to give notes on the performance of other band members. But that didn’t really stop me.

  The other guy who was interested in signing the album was a notorious character named “Simon,” who had an indie label in London. He’d released some albums that I had been a huge fan of. “Simon” was excitable and kind, but he’d show up at our studio to hear tracks, reeking of booze, immediately asking if there were any drinks in the house. I’d take him to the kitchen and watch him pour two straight shots of vodka over ice with shaky hands.

  He was very enthusiastic about the songs, spouting ideas about marketing and how we could roll it out. On a car ride back into Manhattan from the studio, he told me about someone he knew, Fee, who was a clothing designer. “She did the Kylie look from the ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ video, you know. You should work with her.” She was also at that moment outfitting the Darkness, who were blowing up in the UK.

  There were a few other labels that were only half interested, some guy from Sony with whom we had sushi. He was on the fence. “I told him he needs to pay attention,” Neil told me the next day. “I was like, ‘Dude, the songs are exploding out of these guys. When Jason got up to use the little boys’ room, he wrote a chorus to a new song.’ ” Neil was right. We were in the middle of our meal and suddenly a song called “Oooh” appeared in my head. I excused myself to the restroom and sang it into my voice-mail. We recorded it in the studio the next day.

  Scott and I didn’t know who to sign with. Our main two options were British—no label in America was interested. We had to decide between Seb Chew at Polydor or “Simon,” between a major label under Universal or an indie. Scott and I gave both options serious thought. Or was I just pretending to? Was an independent label the more commendable and artistic route? Or was stepping into th
e majors an act of betting on ourselves and having a much larger infrastructure supporting us? There were many trips to London, a lot of meetings.

  “Simon” from the indie had us play a show at Fabric for an anniversary party for his label. Our new drummer, Patrick, who had started going by the name Paddy Boom, came with us. I walked out on the Fabric stage in a Disneyland Star Tours–looking sweat suit that my friend Todd Thomas had designed. It felt luxurious on my skin, being the first thing anyone had designed for me. We tore it up: Having a drummer changed everything. I could strut bigger, throw my arms around, swatting flies that weren’t there. The music’s sturdier foundation bolstered my confidence.

  After the gig, “Simon” walked up to me dressed like some sort of Amish priest, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth. He grabbed my shoulders and, through his grinding teeth, all I could understand were the words techno music and selling records. He was mad out of it, off his fucking face. I walked from the dance floor and knew we weren’t signing with him.

  So that meant signing to Polydor. A woman named Orla Lee would be doing our marketing. She’d had a major hand in helping launch the careers of Daft Punk and Air. Our first meetings there were encouraging—everyone truly seemed to have an affinity for the music. We signed the deal. You always hear awful stories about bands and their record labels. That wasn’t the case with Polydor. We got lucky with a group of passionate music fans who truly wanted people to hear the band.

  My folks had agreed to help support me until we finished the album, but the band itself was still broke. There were so many costs that ran well beyond paying for silly flag dancers. When I looked at the actual numbers, they seemed really large and scary. This was real money. It was nerve-racking to know we were indebted to Neil.

  Scott and I were in charge of finishing the album. We spent every day in his apartment starting at 11 a.m., poring over the tracks into the night, prepping them for the live tracking. We would have five days in a proper studio to get all the live instrumentation that we needed.

  We recorded at a place in Murray Hill called the Shed, and right away we began learning new things about recording and about ourselves as a band. Derek was a frantic guitar player and was great at soloing, Scott was better at rhythm and acoustic, so we had to figure out who was playing what. The drums were a problem. Paddy was great live, but his style was too free to match the click track on the songs that were more dance-oriented and quantized. Scott and I had a lot of intricate work to do, piecing everything together.

  The entire time in the control room I had some CDs propped up as a sonic shrine for what I wanted us to achieve. One of them was the Annie original motion picture soundtrack. Ever since my mom had taken me to see it when I was five, I’d been a sucker for its warm and flat production, the clanky pianos, the sound of tape.

  Scott and I took all the bits back to his kitchen studio to weave them into the album. Some of the drums were usable, but a lot of them we had to program meticulously to sound like real drums and fills. It was tedious work. But the string arrangements that the New York singer and musician Joan as Police Woman had laid down lifted the songs in a way I hadn’t expected. Composer Paul Leschen helped us out with piano on “Take Your Mama.” The horn arrangements by Crispin Cioe and the Uptown Horns were revelatory, and I was in awe watching them work. They had played on songs like “Love Shack” and “Living in America” and were people we’d collaborate with for the next ten years.

  But there was no money left for mixing the record. Both Neil and Polydor thought that Scott and I should mix it ourselves inside the Logic program. So that’s what we did: We mixed the whole album in the kitchen.

  FROM MY DIARY:

  January 4, 2004

  The new year is here, and I’ve been very lazy today. It feels so nice sitting on my bed, ripping CDs and playing Zelda. This is all after a very busy, strange day yesterday, which was very Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon or something. It consisted of me waking up with this bartender I’ve been seeing, Jacob, hanging out, Nintendo, went to the gym, worked out, horny, watched guys jack off in the showers, went to band practice with Joan as Police Woman who’s doing keys for the next show, went to Matthew Delgado’s where I made a bowl of mac and cheese and then went to the Slide. Boyfriends Pinto and Paul were there and it was good to see them, but I still feel kind of dopey for having slept with Paul last summer. Met this kid named Jared who I’ve seen around for a long time. We went back to his place and smoked weed and made out and then I went home. Just as I was turning the light off I got a call from that old flame Mark, the go-go dancer I met in the shark tank. It was about 4:30 a.m. He came over, drunk, which I wasn’t thrilled about. I made him just go to sleep. We woke up at noon and messed around, and I’ve spent the rest of the day hanging out on my own.

  New Year’s turned out to be really fun. Spent it with Tom Donaghy. We went to a friend’s on St. Marks and took some ecstasy. Derek has been thrilled to find out that his leg is okay, and is almost back to normal. He got stood up, so he came out with us. At about 3 a.m. we went to visit Sammy Jo, who was DJing at the Hole. It had a real dark energy, but I’d like to think we brightened it up a bit. I took off my clothes and danced on a box. Then we grabbed some cute boys and went back to Matthew Delgado’s penthouse for a hot-tub sunrise.

  I think 2004 will be the year of the Scissor Sister. My main concern is to write an amazing follow-up.

  January 7, 2004

  Lying here in a bathrobe. It’s freezing outside, listening to Station to Station. Had a slight cold for a couple days. Was in Fred Schneider’s apartment last night. I couldn’t believe it. My dream as a kid was just to have lunch with the B-52’s and there I was, sitting on his couch while he played me demos they’ve been recording. He’s singing with us onstage in a few days. It’s beyond the call of duty on his part. He seems a bit nervous about it. Tomorrow is our last rehearsal for the Bowery show. It’s going to be a blast, a little scary, a lot of press will be there, but whatever, no need to speculate.

  The album got a five-star review in Uncut magazine. It’s kind of a trip. I am (we are) going to write another album and it will be better than this one. The astrology column I read by Rob Brezsny this week used death as a metaphor for killing off beliefs and habits that are outworn burdens. This week he tells me to “seek up-close, experimental immersion, not conceptual understanding from a distance.”

  THE FIRST TIME I SLIPPED into the water it was just a few degrees under body temperature and was tolerable at first, but after hours of being filmed in the tank, we emerged cold and clammy, our bodies, scrotums, and hands shriveled from the dampness. The band had arrived in frigid, rainy Devon in January to shoot the video for “Comfortably Numb.” It took two days in a gigantic, gloomy water tank that must have been fifty feet deep. The video was to be of us floating and swimming around in the water, with CGI creatures to be added in postproduction.

  A kind of wet still permeated when I dried off for the last time. As we packed up for London, I wasn’t feeling very well. Our driver was taking the scenic route and going about ten miles under the speed limit, pointing out landmarks. It was interminable—the car was crawling like my skin, like whatever virus was taking over and multiplying in my body.

  By the time I got to my hotel room at the Columbia, I was gripped by a deep fever. The chills were so intense I couldn’t get out of bed. I just lay there, moaning back to whatever hotel ghosts could hear me.

  The next day we had the main photo shoot for the album. I had been unabashedly inspired by the Roxy Music gatefold of For Your Pleasure, the band shot against a stark white background, with Brian Eno on one side in a collar of feathers, which I jacked for my own look. Our shoot lasted all day and I spent most of it curled up on the couch in a fetal position, just standing up and lurching to the set at the latest possible moment. It was maybe the sickest I’ve ever felt. You can see my bleariness in the photo, my eyes hazy.

  Days later we were in Barcelona playing a very late show
at Nitsa, the same place where I’d bought those legendary “white diamond” pills a year and a half ago. I was by no means recovered yet, but whatever flu I had was now being passed around the band. It was brutal. Derek was in terrible shape, just as I had been, shivering and eyes watering. The whole night was bleak. At the hotel before the gig, Ana had a kind of sad fear attack. Scott and I met up with her in her bedroom.

  “I can’t keep doing this.” She was sobbing. “I can’t just ride around in a van, eating fried foods at gas stations!”

  “Ana.” Somehow Scott always kept his cool. “If we’re still riding around in a van in four months’ time, that means this whole thing is not working and we’ll be done with it.”

  I went back to my room, with a horrible guilt. It was all my fault. Everybody around me was miserable and stressed-out, all because of some rock and roll fantasy I’d had since I was a little kid. That’s one of the hardest things about leading a band: When things aren’t going great, it’s on your shoulders. I can’t stand it when people around me are unhappy.

  That night, the show at Nitsa was serviceable, but Waldorf, the band that had gone on before us (they were on A Touch of Class), had played a pretentious and sonically aggressive set with outlandish costumes and props. It not only fell flat, they had cleared out the club. By the time we went onstage, Derek was practically catatonic with the flu.

  When I went to bed that night, I had a coughing attack with a tissue and there was a big smudge of blood on the Kleenex. I threw it away and pretended not to see.

  WE’D DRAWN A COUPLE HUNDRED people to a Virgin Megastore in Central London. Not a line out the door, but a good turnout. After playing a five-song set on a tiny stage set up between CD racks, we signed records at a long table. The album was finally released that day in the UK—February 4, 2004. Not in North America yet: It was still a time when they staggered releases from country to country.