What were they looking for here? Had they never read Boston’s propaganda paper, with its bitter condemnation of everything they stood for? With its fierce attacks on the “legislative-litigative complex,” its demands for sweeping reforms?
Was it possible that they failed to take him seriously?
I joined the crowd, mingling, listening to conversations. At the doors, Boston cadres were cutting ticket prices for those who showed voter registrations. Those who showed unemployment cards got in for even less.
The prosperous Americans stood in little knots of besieged gentility, frightened of the others, yet curious, smiling. There was a liveliness in the destitute: brighter clothing, knotted kerchiefs at the elbows, cheap Korean boots of iridescent cloth. Many wore tricornered hats, some with a cockade of red, white, and blue, or the circle of thirteen stars.
This was rock and roll, I realized; that was the secret. They had all grown up on it, these Americans, even the richer ones. To them, the sixty-year tradition of rock music seemed as ancient as the Pyramids. It had become a Jerusalem, a Mecca of American tribes.
The crowd milled, waiting, and Boston let them wait. At the back of the crowd, Boston crewmen did a brisk business in starred souvenir shirts, programs, and tapes. Heat and tension mounted, and people began to sweat. The stage remained dark.
I bought the souvenir items and studied them. They talked about cheap computers, a phone company owned by its workers, a free database, neighborhood co-ops that could buy unmilled grain by the ton. Attention Miami, read one brochure in letters of dripping red. It named the ten largest global corporations and meticulously listed every subsidiary doing business in Miami, with its address, its phone number, the percentage of income shipped to banks in Europe and Japan. Each list went on for pages. Nothing else. To Boston’s audience, nothing else was necessary.
The house lights darkened. A frightening animal roar rose from the crowd. A single spot lit Tom Boston, stencilling him against darkness.
“My fellow Americans,” he said. A funereal hush followed. The crowd strained for each word. Boston smirked. “My f-f-f-f-fellow Americans.” It was a clever microphone, digitized, a small synthesizer in itself. “My fellow Am-am-am-am-AMM!” The words vanished in a sudden soaring wail of feedback. “My Am! My fellows! My Am! My fellows! Miami, Miami, Miami, MIAMI!” The sound of Boston’s voice, suddenly leaping out of all human context, becoming something shattering, superhuman—the effect was bone-chilling. It passed all barriers; it seeped directly into the skin, the blood.
“Tom Jefferson Died Broke!” he shouted. It was the title of his first song. Stage lights flashed up and hell broke its gates. Was it a “song” at all, this strange, volcanic creation? There was a melody loose in it somewhere, pursued by Plisetskaya’s saxophone, but the sheer volume and impact hurled it through the audience like a sheet of flame. I had never before heard anything so loud. What Cairo’s renegade set called rock and roll paled to nothing beside this invisible hurricane.
At first it seemed raw noise. But that was only a kind of flooring, a merciless grinding foundation below the rising architectures of sound. Technology did it: a piercing, soaring, digitized, utter clarity, of perfect cybernetic acoustics adjusting for each echo, a hundred times a second.
Boston played a glass harmonica: an instrument invented by the early American genius Benjamin Franklin. The harmonica was made of carefully tuned glass disks, rotating on a spindle, and played by streaking a wet fingertip across each moving edge.
It was the sound of pure crystal, seemingly sourceless, of tooth-aching purity.
The famous Western musician, Wolfgang Mozart, had composed for the Franklin harmonica in the days of its novelty. But legend said that its players went mad, their nerves shredded by its clarity of sound. It was a legend Boston was careful to exploit. He played the machine sparingly, with the air of a magician, of a Solomon unbottling demons. I was glad of his spare use, for its sound was so beautiful that it stung the brain.
Boston threw aside his hat. Long coiled hair spilled free. Boston was what Americans called “black”; at least he was often referred to as black, though no one seemed certain. He was no darker than myself. The beat rose up, a strong animal heaving. Boston stalked across the stage as if on springs, clutching his microphone. He began to sing.
The song concerned Thomas Jefferson, a famous American president of the eighteenth century. Jefferson was a political theorist who wrote revolutionary manifestos and favored a decentralist mode of government. The song, however, dealt with the relations of Jefferson and a black concubine in his household. He had several children by this woman, who were a source of great shame, due to the odd legal code of the period. Legally, they were his slaves, and it was only at the end of his life, when he was in great poverty, that Jefferson set them free.
It was a story whose pathos makes little sense to a Muslim. But Boston’s audience, knowing themselves Jefferson’s children, took it to heart.
The heat became stifling, as massed bodies swayed in rhythm. The next song began in a torrent of punishing noise. Frantic hysteria seized the crowd; their bodies spasmed with each beat, the shaman Boston seeming to scourge them. It was a fearsome song, called “The Whites of Their Eyes,” after an American war-cry. He sang of a tactic of battle: to wait until the enemy comes close enough so that you can meet his eyes, frighten him with your conviction, and then shoot him point blank. The chorus harked again and again to the “Cowards of the long kill,” a Boston slogan condemning those whose abstract power structures let them murder without ever seeing pain.
Three more songs followed, one of them slower, the others battering the audience like iron rods. Boston stalked like a madman, his clothing dark with sweat. My heart spasmed as heavy bass notes, filled with dark murderous power, surged through my ribs. I moved away from the heat to the fringe of the crowd, feeling light-headed and sick.
I had not expected this. I had expected a political spokesman, but instead it seemed I was assaulted by the very Voice of the West. The Voice of a society drunk with raw power, maddened by the grinding roar of machines. It filled me with terrified awe.
To think that once, the West had held us in its armored hands. It had treated Islam like a natural resource, its invincible armies plowing through the lands of the Faithful like bulldozers. The West had chopped our world up into colonies, and smiled upon us with its awful schizophrenic perfidy. It told us to separate God and State, to separate Mind and Body, to separate Reason and Faith. It had torn us apart.
I stood shaking as the first set ended. The band vanished backstage, and a single figure approached the microphone. I recognized him as a famous American television comedian, who had abandoned his own career to join Boston.
The man began to joke and clown, his antics seeming to soothe the crowd, which hooted with laughter. This intermission was a wise move on Boston’s part, I thought. The level of pain, of intensity, had become unbearable.
It struck me then how much Boston was like the great Khomeini. Boston too had the persona of the Man of Sorrows, the sufferer after justice, the ascetic among corruption, the battler against odds. And the air of the mystic, the adept, at least as far as such a thing was possible in America. I thought of this, and deep fear struck me once again.
I walked through the gates to the Colosseum’s outer hall, seeking air and room to think. Others had come out too. They leaned against the wall, men and women, with the look of wrung-out mops. Some smoked cigarettes, others argued over brochures, others simply sat with palsied grins.
Still others wept. These disturbed me most, for these were the ones whose souls seemed stung and opened. Khomeini made men weep like that, tearing aside despair like a bandage from a burn. I walked down the hall, watching them, making mental notes.
I stopped by a woman in dark glasses and a trim business suit. She leaned against the wall, shaking, her face beneath the glasses slick with silent tears. Something about the precision of her styled hair, her cheekbones
, struck a memory. I stood beside her, waiting, and recognition came.
“Hello,” I said. “We have something in common, I think. You’ve been covering the Boston tour. For CBS.”
She glanced at me once, and away. “I don’t know you.”
“You’re Marjory Cale, the correspondent.”
She drew in a breath. “You’re mistaken.”
“ ‘Luddite fanatic,’ ” I said lightly. “ ‘Rock demagogue.’ ”
“Go away,” she said.
“Why not talk about it? I’d like to know your point of view.”
“Go away, you nasty little man.”
I returned to the crowd inside. The comedian was now reading at length from the American Bill of Rights, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Freedom of advertising,” he said. “Freedom of global network television conglomerates. Right to a speedy and public trial, to be repeated until our lawyers win. A well-regulated militia being necessary, citizens will be issued orbital lasers and aircraft carriers.” No one was laughing.
The crowd was in an ugly mood when Boston reappeared. Even the well-dressed ones now seemed surly and militant, not recognizing themselves as the enemy. Like the Shah’s soldiers who at last refused to fire, who threw themselves sobbing at Khomeini’s feet.
“You all know this one,” Boston said. With his wife, he raised a banner, one of the first flags of the American Revolution. It bore a coiled snake, a native American viper, with the legend: Don’t Tread On Me. A sinister, scaly rattling poured from the depths of a synthesizer, merging with the crowd’s roar of recognition, and a sprung, loping rhythm broke loose. Boston edged back and forth at the stage’s rim, his eyes fixed, his long neck swaying. He shook himself like a man saved from drowning and leaned into the microphone.
“We know you own us/You step upon us/We feel the onus/But here’s a bonus/Today I see/So enemy/Don’t tread on me/Don’t tread on me . . . ” Simple words, fitting each beat with all the harsh precision of the English language. A chant of raw hostility. The crowd took it up. This was the hatred, the humiliation of a society brought low. Americans. Somewhere within them conviction still burned. The conviction they had always had: that they were the only real people on our planet. The chosen ones, the Light of the World, the Last Best Hope of Mankind, the Free and the Brave, the crown of creation. They would have killed for him. I knew, someday, they would.
I was called to Boston’s suite at two o’clock that morning. I had shaved and showered, dashed on the hotel’s complimentary cologne. I wanted to smell like an American.
Boston’s guards frisked me, carefully and thoroughly, outside the elevator. I submitted with good grace.
Boston’s suite was crowded. It had the air of an election victory. There were many politicians, sipping glasses of bubbling alcohol, laughing, shaking hands. Miami’s Mayor was there, with half his City Council.
I recognized a young woman Senator, speaking urgently into her pocket phone, her large freckled breasts on display in an evening gown.
I mingled, listening. Men spoke of Boston’s ability to raise funds, of the growing importance of his endorsement. More of Boston’s guards stood in corners, arms folded, eyes hidden, their faces stony. A black man distributed lapel buttons with the face of Martin Luther King on a background of red and white stripes. The wall-sized television played a tape of the first Moon Landing. The sound had been turned off, and people all over the world, in the garb of the 1960s, mouthed silently at the camera, their eyes shining.
It was not until four o’clock that I finally met the star himself. The party had broken up by then, the politicians politely ushered out, their vows of undying loyalty met with discreet smiles. Boston was in a back bedroom with his wife, and a pair of aides.
“Sayyid,” he said, and shook my hand. In person he seemed smaller, older, his hybrid face, with stage makeup, beginning to peel.
“Dr. Boston,” I said.
He laughed freely. “Sayyid, my friend. You’ll ruin my street fucking credibility.”
“I want to tell the story as I see it,” I said.
“Then you’ll have to tell it to me,” he said, and turned briefly to an aide. He dictated in a low, staccato voice, not losing his place in our conversation, simply loosing a burst of thought. “ ‘Let us be frank. Before I showed an interest you were ready to sell the ship for scrap iron. This is not an era for supertankers. They are dead tech, smokestack-era garbage. Reconsider my offer.’ ” The secretary pounded keys. Boston looked at me again, returning the searchlight of his attention.
“You plan to buy a supertanker?” I said.
“I wanted an aircraft carrier,” he said, smiling. “They’re all in mothballs, but the Feds frown on selling nuke power plants to private citizens.”
“We will make the tanker into a floating stadium,” Plisetskaya put in. She sat slumped in a padded chair, wearing satin lounge pajamas. A half-filled ashtray on the chair’s arm reeked of strong tobacco.
“Ever been inside a tanker?” Boston said. “Huge. Great acoustics.” He sat suddenly on the sprawling bed and pulled off his snakeskin boots. “So, Sayyid. Tell me this story of yours.”
“You graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers with a doctorate in political science,” I said. “In five years.”
“That doesn’t count,” Boston said, yawning behind his hand. “That was before rock and roll beat my brains out.”
“You ran for state office in Massachusetts,” I said. “You lost a close race. Two years later you were touring with your first band—Swamp Fox. You were an immediate success. You became involved in political fund-raising, recruiting your friends in the music industry. You started your own record label. You helped organize Rock for Detente, where you met your wife-to-be. Your romance was front-page news on both continents. Record sales soared.”
“You left out the first time I got shot at,” Boston said. “That’s more interesting; Val and I are old hat by now.”
He paused, then burst out at the second secretary. “ ‘I urge you once again not to go public. You will find yourselves vulnerable to a leveraged buyout. I’ve told you that Evans is an agent of Marubeni. If he brings your precious plant down around your ears, don’t come crying to me.’ ”
“February 1998,” I said. “An anti-communist zealot fired on your bus.”
“You’re a big fan, Sayyid.”
“Why are you afraid of multinationals?” I said. “That was the American preference, wasn’t it? Global trade, global economics?”
“We screwed up,” Boston said. “Things got out of hand.”
“Out of American hands, you mean?”
“We used our companies as tools for development,” Boston said, with the patience of a man instructing a child. “But then our lovely friends in South America refused to pay their debts. And our staunch allies in Europe and Japan signed the Geneva Economic Agreement and decided to crash the dollar. And our friends in the Arab countries decided not to be countries any more, but one almighty Caliphate, and, just for good measure, they pulled all their oil money out of our banks and into Islamic ones. How could we compete? They were holy banks, and our banks pay interest, which is a sin, I understand.” He paused, his eyes glittering, and fluffed curls from his neck. “And all that time, we were already in hock to our fucking ears to pay for being the world’s policeman.”
“So the world betrayed your country,” I said. “Why?”
He shook his head. “Isn’t it obvious? Who needs St. George when the dragon is dead? Some Afghani fanatics scraped together enough plutonium for a Big One, and they blew the dragon’s fucking head off. And the rest of the body is still convulsing, ten years later. We bled ourselves white competing against Russia, which was stupid, but we’d won. With two giants, the world trembles. One giant, and the midgets can drag it down. So that’s what happened. They took us out, that’s all. They own us.”
“It sounds very simple,” I said.
He showed annoyance for the first time. “Valya says
you’ve read our newspapers. I’m not telling you anything new. Should I lie about it? Look at the figures, for Christ’s sake. The EEC and Japanese use their companies for money pumps; they’re sucking us dry, deliberately. You don’t look stupid, Sayyid. You know very well what’s happening to us, anyone in the Third World does.”
“You mentioned Christ,” I said. “You believe in Him?”
Boston rocked back onto his elbows and grinned. “Do you?”
“Of course. He is one of our Prophets. We call Him Isa.”
Boston looked cautious. “I never stand between a man and his God.” He paused. “We have a lot of respect for the Arabs, truly. What they’ve accomplished. Breaking free from the world economic system, returning to authentic local tradition . . . You see the parallels.”
“Yes,” I said. I smiled sleepily, and covered my mouth as I yawned. “Jet lag. Your pardon, please. These are only questions my editors would want me to ask. If I were not an admirer, a fan as you say, I would not have this assignment.”
He smiled and looked at his wife. Plisetskaya lit another cigarette and leaned back, looking skeptical. Boston grinned. “So the sparring’s over, Charlie?”
“I have every record you’ve made,” I said. “This is not a job for hatchets.” I paused, weighing my words. “I still believe that our Caliph is a great man. I support the Islamic Resurgence. I am Muslim. But I think, like many others, that we have gone a bit too far in closing every window to the West. Rock and roll is a Third World music at heart. Don’t you agree?”
“Sure,” Boston said, closing his eyes. “Do you know the first words spoken in independent Zimbabwe? Right after they ran up the flag.”
“No.”
He spoke out blindly, savoring the words. “Ladies and gentlemen. Bob Marley. And the Wailers.”
“You admire him.”
“Comes with the territory,” said Boston, flipping a coil of hair.
“He had a black mother, a white father. And you?”
“Oh, both my parents were shameless mongrels like myself,” Boston said. “I’m a second-generation nothing-in-particular. An American.” He sat up, knotting his hands, looking tired. “You going to stay with the tour a while, Charlie?” He spoke to a secretary. “Get me a Kleenex.” The woman rose.
Rock On Page 40
