I laughed and said to Todd’s voice, “Original? I’m the only drummer of Savage Night, you idiot.”
The tape played on: “—in New Orleans, November 22. And we’re going to see if he’ll agree to reunite with his old bandmates.”
Funny, Todd doing his own Bands Reunited, as if anyone gives a shit about us anymore. Hey, we made some good music, but it was very much a product of its time. I’d moved on, and so had the world.
Then there are people like Todd who never grow up.
Maybe some would say that about me.
3
Jacksonville, 1986
I met Todd in Jacksonville, Florida, both of us in community college. Doug was my closest friend, known him since we were in junior high. I was the one who forced him to take up the bass when I started playing drums so we would always have at least half a band. Stefan came to us from an ad we thumb-tacked to a corkboard at the local music store.
We wasted all our valuable study time in a punk band called Kicking and Screaming, and we sounded pretty good when the instruments were cranked high as we could stand and filtered through cheap Ibanez effects pedals before Doug’s neighbors called the cops and his dad pulled the fuse, killing everything in the garage. And Todd would keep singing another five seconds, squawking a fake Brit accent.
The first couple months we only learned half a song, pieces of others, and stuff we made up. We wanted to do The Clash and The Ramones, wanted to look like Motorhead and Judas Priest. We tried punk versions of Adam and the Ants. Problem was that Stefan played too well and Todd was better at imitating Robert Plant than Johnny Rotten.
I remember the phone guy coming by one day to put a new line in for Doug’s sister Alison, about sixteen then. We lounged in the yard waiting for the rest of the band to show up while we watched this man in his yellow hard hat climb the pole with wrenches and looped wires and an orange plastic phone dangling from his belt.
Doug reclined on the grass, arms behind him so straight they inverted. I dripped sweat from my hair all over my Black Sabbath T-shirt and cut-off jeans. Alison stood beside me with her arms crossed, fingernails pink and short. She had a crush on me. Cute, but when I looked at her I saw jail. We all had our heads crooked back and our eyes squinted watching the phone guy.
“He’s a genius!” I said, giving it a Monty Python flair.
“Yeah,” Alison said. She wore bright make-up, a fading orange streak in her hair. It was brighter a few weeks before, but the girls at school made fun so she spent hours and hours trying to make it wash out to her natural dirty-blonde again. “My own phone line. I can call you now.” She elbowed me.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “You’ve got my number, right?”
“Doug’s got it. I can ask Doug.”
“Whatever,” I said. Mental note: Tell Doug to not give her my number.
Doug was slack-jawed, sun-stroked, had retina burn.
“Hey, are we going to play or what?” Todd yelled from the garage. He and Stefan were late again, but they yelled at us.
I helped Doug to his feet and we walked over to the garage while the phone guy measured enough line to hang between the pole and the house.
“Man,” Stefan said, the German accent still not wiped out by a decade of American TV. He always wore mirrored sunglasses, hair pulled back into a greasy tail. “There’s a party coming up at Melissa’s house, you know. She told Jennifer that it would be cool for us to play there.”
Todd and Doug went, “Cool.”
I said, “But we only know half a song.”
“We can learn more. We’ve got two weeks.”
“It took us two months to learn half a song.”
Todd pumped a fist. “But we can do this! Practice more, do some more covers of pop shit, rock ’em out.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. The whole band was a sham. Doug still spent most of his weekends playing Dungeons and Dragons. Todd worked with his dad at the local farmer’s market, selling peas, corn, and peaches out of an old pickup truck. You’d never know he was a farm boy the way he dressed and spoke. Idolized Diamond Dave. I worked at the library part-time, re-shelving books, bringing home stacks of old paperbacks and devouring them. I was on a Jim Thompson kick.
“The preppies aren’t going to give a shit about punk,” Todd said. “We should try Van Halen, Def Leppard, Zep. Shit, dress up a couple of Police songs.”
I threw my sticks to the ground. “The Police? You try playing those on drums. Jesus Christ.”
Doug didn’t say a word. He usually didn’t. Just leaned against the wall.
Stefan shook his head. “Ja, so kill the whole fucking band, why don’t you? You have no balls.”
“I don’t want to make asses of ourselves. We should skip this party and learn more songs.”
Todd said, “I’d kick you out right now if you weren’t the only drummer I knew.”
I shoved him hard and then reached over the trap kit for my snare. I cradled it and said, “That’s it. I quit.” Turned to Doug. “I’ll get the rest of the kit tomorrow.”
He nodded.
Todd sputtered, ended up with, “C’mon, man.”
I picked up my sticks and headed across the lawn before this turned into another fight. We’d all quit at least once. The phone guy hopped the last few feet down the pole with his spool of wire and started backing towards the house. It looked like a cool job. I wondered if he listened in on phone calls. He could probably solve every murder in town and then turn around and wreck some marriages.
Alison was beside me suddenly, smelling like fresh fruit. She said, “Why aren’t you playing?”
“I quit.”
“Why?” She sounded heartbroken.
I stared down the street. “They’re not serious enough. They want to play parties before we’re ready.”
“But you guys are, like, just so good, you know? I turn off my radio when you play.”
“Please.”
“I mean it.”
I turned to her. An eyebrow lifted, her arms crossed over her tank-top, lifting her little tits. Couldn’t help but smile.
“Watch this,” I said.
The phone guy was hooking up wires to the house, so I decided to take a climb. I set the snare and sticks down and started up the telephone pole. Damn thing was hot and splintery. No boots, no belts. I grabbed the little metal hooks. Look at me, five feet up. Alison was loving it and scared all at once. The garage door was closed and I heard Stefan ripping through a solo. The phone guy ran back over, grabbed my feet and yanked me down. He threw me onto the grass. “Get lost.”
I pushed myself up and grabbed my snare. Alison was holding my sticks. They were purple, my favorites.
“Can I have these?” she said.
I smiled. “Yeah, sure.” Then I bowed like a gentleman and walked three blocks home.
The next day, I came back for my kit and got ambushed by a full band meeting. Todd apologized but wouldn’t look me in the eye. He asked me to give it a shot, just one more week and see if we could put a set together.
That’s what we did. Surprised the hell out of me.
I thought I was big shit when they asked me to stay, thinking they must have realized there was no better drummer in town than me. I was a valuable commodity. A year later I found out from Doug that it was really because Alison was inconsolable after I left. Cried for hours, yelled at the band, almost on the verge of going to the hospital.
Big shit indeed.
4
New Orleans, 2004
I sat at a table near the window in La Madeleine's sipping sweet black coffee. It was eight forty-five. Todd didn’t show.
Jackson Square was full of tourists and lined with tables—palm readers, psychics, and painters. On the corner over my shoulder, a man wearing a biblical robe, painted silver head-to-toe, stood monument-still on a plastic milk crate. I’d been sitting there since seven-thirty, on my fifth cup of coffee. I don’t know what made me expect anything else
I left the café and headed down Royal Street towards Todd’s hotel. International House was on the edge of the Central Business District. It was the trendy hotel of the moment, a place for people who thought they needed much more than a bed and shower to enjoy their stay in the city. Savage Night used to take over an entire floor in places like that, muddy it up and leave it in shards. Wish I’d known then that the front-end cost was bad enough and they just tacked on damage debt after the fact. It was less fun when you knew they didn’t care. They wrote off our rebellion and bought new furniture on our dime.
I walked the distance in twenty minutes, slipped inside the lobby and took a look at the grandeur. Everything had an amber glow to it, the instant antique color. The place was damned quiet, and only a few people milled around, a few bohemian backpackers in torn jeans snapped photos with a toss away camera. I walked over to the front desk and stood in front of a young guy in a suit and name badge.
“Dennis, how you doing?” I said.
He looked up. I was a rough customer, a ragged bomber jacket clinging to my bone-thin frame, hair short and spiked, face cragged and lined. This Dennis kid didn’t let it phase him. He had seen the way rich people dressed. They bought their grunge off the rack.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m here to pick up a friend. He’s visiting from out of town, but he’s not in the lobby.”
“You know his room number?”
“He told me. I forgot.”
The kid sighed. “His name?”
“Todd Delacroix,” I said, a little cringe at the end of his name. A fake, like Cal, like Merle, but the one he wanted to be known by.
Dennis widened his eyes, puffed his cheeks, then pulled it together and said, “I’m sorry, no one by that name is here.”
“You’ve got your guests memorized, then? Instant recall?”
“Photographic memory. That’s why they hired me.”
“Sure, you look that smart. Listen, the name then. How about Roger Walters the Third?” I had forgotten about the name he used to book hotels. We all had a nom de plume, help keep the fans/stalkers guessing. Mine had been Ernie Hammett. The Italian fans broke the code first and word spread slowly. This was long before the Internet went broadband, so only AOL users got word before everyone else. Odd that Todd must have thought he still needed the “protection.”
Dennis nodded, barely, but enough. “Sir, you can’t just give me random names like this. If you have a room number, I can call up and see if he—I mean if the guest—is expecting you.”
He was alone at the desk, so I pulled out a wad of bills, laid forty on the counter, and said, “This is because I’m a nice guy. And I’ll add to it if you make that call. I know he’s here.”
He looked over his shoulder, left palm wiping the cash off the counter like a magician vanishing a card. A smooth guy, this Dennis. If we weren’t in public, I would have broken his hand.
He picked up the phone and asked my name.
“Merle Johnson. Tell him he’s late for breakfast.”
We waited. Dennis looked at me, then the ceiling, then off to the side. I kept my eyes on him, no smile, fingers tapping steady like a dripping faucet. After a minute, he hung up the phone.
“Sorry, sir. No answer.”
Already checked out? No, the kid would’ve told me. Either we missed each other in transit or Todd had overslept, not giving a shit about any schedule other than his own. I remember him pulling the same act after our first gold album, late for interviews and photo shoots. Since the singer brings in the money, we didn’t mind giving him a little prima donna leeway. Then he skipped recording sessions (“I need to be alone in the studio when I lay down vocals.”), rehearsals, and was two hours late for a big ass show on a metal festival. Almost got us thrown off the rest of the tour. After he finally lurched in, cocky like it was no big deal, and belted out a damn good performance (I’ll give him that), I kicked his ass from one end of the parking lot to the other.
All that happened a long time ago. Without me or the manager or Sylvia, the old habits must have grown back like weeds.
“Maybe he’s sleeping,” I said.
Dennis shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Like I said, we had an appointment.”
Dennis tried to smile and remember his training on handling a customer like me.
I said, “You’re doing a good job, and maybe you’re even enjoying this a little, but don’t make me ask to speak with your manager. Look at me. Would I waltz in here dressed like this asking to meet with singer boy if I didn’t have some fucking weight? You think you’re protecting a guy who needs people like me making deals for him to keep him in the game?”
“You’re his agent?” Almost excited.
“Guy like Todd has several agents.” I sighed, shook my head. Playing the role as I remembered it. Manager, agent, whatever—thinking of the guy in Spinal Tap carrying the cricket bat.
Dennis tapped a couple of computer keys on the console, the screen imbedded so I couldn’t see what he was doing. Then he lifted his chin and said, “Another forty?”
“What?”
“You said you’d add to the tip if I called him. But what I’m doing now—”
“Yeah, forty. No, fifty.”
He lifted a pen and scratched a number on a Post It, then turned to an accordion file and rifled through, pulled out a keycard. He slipped the note and card to me. “Second floor.”
I counted out fifty and tossed the bills at him the way a Rat Packer would, wanting to say, Here kid, buy yourself some dignity.
*
The halls were warm and smelled like bad potpourri. I found the door, “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the handle. I didn’t bother knocking. Slipped the card, heard the click, walked on inside.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
One king-sized bed, comforter hanging off the end. Todd was laid out Christ-style, pale as the sheets beneath him, especially in the sunlight streaming in from the open curtains, a view of the CBD in full-groove. He was naked except for green briefs. Black and white photos of jazz artists hung on the walls. I didn’t recognize them, but wondered if either had blown out their lives like Todd had.
On the floor, on the table, on the nightstand, must have been fifty empty or nearly empty bottles of booze—vodka mostly, and some gin and rum. Four whiskies looked nearly full. He liked mixed drinks, I knew. Liked sweet things. I didn’t see any Coke or Sprite cans among the mess. God, I had no idea. This was worse than the whole band’s drinking combined at our peak. Maybe a line of coke every now and then to wake up. But one man and fifty bottles didn’t compute unless he was going for a Hendrix/ Morrison/Bonham suicide trip.
There it was, under the car keys. A folded piece of hotel stationary.
Shit. I thought a hundred Shits and stumbled, shouldered the wall, kept my hands in my pockets. Never occurred to me that I was Todd’s last chance. He really thought I would go along with him. When I brushed him off, he didn’t have anything else to live for. Fuck him if he wanted me to feel guilty. Sick, angry, even a bit sad, but I was past feeling our lives were tied together. In the band days, we argued, made-up, went weeks without talking, had agents brokering stupid agreements between us so we would finish the album/tour/video, all the garbage normal friends went through except at Hollywood volume.
Then I heard a shuffle, very slight. A moan at whisper strength. I stepped over to the bed, leaned closer to Todd’s body. He stunk like an old man wasting away. Track marks on his arms, mostly old and scarred, only a few fresh ones. I guessed I wouldn’t find many in spots the public might see. They’d be hidden between his toes. His face was puffy. One eye wasn’t closed completely, giving me a slit of possible consciousness. His head lolled barely an inch. Something inside him was still alive, hanging on by threads.
“Goddamn, Todd. What were you thinking?”
No answer, of course. He was breathing quick and shallow through his mouth, fishlike. It smelled swee
t and sour.
“There’s more to life than heavy metal, you stupid bastard.”
More nothing.
I pocketed the car keys and opened his letter. He had filled the page with a sloppy pencil script.
The world has taken everything from me, doesn’t even give me a second
chance to let me entertain you. So I wanted to put my band Savage Night back together and take another shot at it. How do I do that without our dead drummer, right?
Calvin Christopher is not dead. He’s living in New Orleans under the name Merle Johnson, somewhere in the French Quarter. I’ve got the proof on my laptop, which you’ll find in the trunk of my rental car. Back-up files are burned on a couple CD-R’s in my LA apartment.
I approached Cal about a reunion, hoping that first step would lead him to going public, settling his debts, and agreeing to reform the band. With him on board, I was sure the other members would be all for one, one for all. But Cal turned me down, still running from his past instead of facing it. I hope he understands I’m revealing his secret because I care about him. He can’t keep hiding. Sorry for the trouble, and sorry we couldn’t do this thing.
I’ve decided there’s nothing else to keep me going. Like Def Leppard sings, “Better to burn out than to fade away.”
Long Live Rock,
T
The last few lines were darker than the rest, itchy, like he’d leaned all his weight on the page.
He wasn’t dead yet. I wasn’t sure how much hope there was of pulling him out of this near-coma. I looked down at the half-opened eye again. The breathing was still desperate.
“Thanks, Todd. Appreciate it.” I held the letter up for him, then folded it small and stuck it in my back jeans pockets.
I reached for the phone, thinking I’d buzz Dennis at the desk and get an ambulance over here pronto, then stay by Todd’s side until he came to—if he came to—and make sure he didn’t say anything until I got a head start. A last ditch effort to get the selfish prick to think about someone other than himself. Yeah, like I had room to talk. At least I wasn’t still looking for fame.
The Drummer Page 3
