Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

by Steve Almond

  “What is that?” I said. “A harpsichord?”

  Boris seated himself and began pumping the thick pedals under the keyboard.

  “Pump organ,” Bones murmured.

  Boris set his hands on the keyboard. For a second, we heard only the clack of the yellowed keys and the soft thud of the pedal beneath. Then notes began trickling out of the pipes. None of us recognized the tune; it was something he made up on the spot I suspect, a boogie-woogie by way of Aaron Copland. He closed his eyes and his face tilted slightly up, then his voice joined in, majestically, and the particulars of the song seemed absorbed into something larger, an ancient feeling like jubilation.

  This was life with Boris. Music lay at the center of everything. He had led us astray and risked the injury of his lead guitarist, but now, as the sun set over Buzzards Bay and golden light flooded the room and dust motes made wild circles around his head, we stood behind him swaying and nobody said anything for a long time.

  Later there was dinner and booze and pot. Boris busted out his guitar and played a few new songs. He was writing all the time, between gigs and travel and the jobs taken and not quite kept. We all waited, in those months, for what he would write next, our desire being not a greed for proximity or ownership, but for particular forms of beauty and what they might reveal about ourselves.

  I remember the night, a few months later at my place, when Boris pulled out his mandolin. (I didn’t even know he owned one.) We were sitting on the green couch in my sunroom. His bandmates were scattered around the place, passed out amid the homemade bongs and stinking curs and puddles of chocolate goo. My future wife, a figure of possibly masochistic patience, lay curled in the bedroom.

  Our throats were raw and our souls were wired; they always were in those days. Boris began plucking at the strings absently, coaxing himself toward sleep. But the notes resolved into something more solid, a chugging minor-key progression. Then Boris began to sing in his burred baritone and I felt the holy shiver. The song was built around a single line, chanted like an incantation: The green wish is here. Such a phrase! I figured he’d nicked it from Isaiah. The song ended and Boris grinned shyly. The mandolin lay in his lap like a polished stone.

  “‘The green wish,’” I said. “What’s that?”

  “Spring,” he said softly.

  Chicken Man

  And then there was the time Boris asked me to help him write some lyrics. See, he had this one swampy blues song called “Chicken Man” that he sometimes played at the end of shows. But it needed a couple more verses, which I supplied within twenty minutes of his request. This meant we were coauthors if you wanted to get technical about it, which I certainly did.

  A few months later, at a concert I’d organized for Boris called (I kid you not) “Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life,” the band started playing “Chicken Man” and Boris stepped to the mic and mumbled, “Hey, I can’t remember the words to this one. Is Steve Almond here? Let’s get Steve up here to sing this one.”

  Wasn’t this what I’d wanted all along, what every Drooling Fanatic longs for, the chance to be born again? Here it was! The crowd let out a whoop. Only I was scared to death, in the same way I’d been scared as a kid whenever I wanted something too much. I would forget the words or hit a flat note or, most likely, I’d get up there and do my best and people would applaud my Drooling exuberance, then it would be over and Boris would take back the mic and everyone would look at me with the minor pity of this recognition.

  Or worse, maybe they wouldn’t. For a second, I saw myself seizing the microphone with snarling brio. What a voice! everyone would say. We’d thought he was a writer. But really, he’s a rock star! This would explain why, for instance, I was so miserable, why, though I was putting books into the world and occasionally reading from them in public, I still hated myself and hated what I did, the stupid precious intent of all my decisions. Maybe I would lose myself in the song. Maybe I would produce the beautiful roar I suspected lay hidden inside me, and thereby confirm my true calling—and then where would I be? I’d be Joaquin Phoenix, basically, minus any possible hope of success.

  And so I stood there in a queer paralysis of desire and dread. My friends turned to me. Someone tugged at my shirt. It was like one of those scenes from the movies where time slows down and everyone’s face gets really big. Boris was staring at me, too. But I couldn’t speak. Instead, I watched my hand rise up and begin to flutter, as if to brush away his kind offer. The Chicken Man had made his debut at last.

  Oddly, this realization did not crush me. On the contrary, it came as a relief. I was now free to focus my fervor on promoting Boris. I started booking gigs for him, and sending ardent letters on his behalf to my “contacts” in the music business.

  It was this last stunt that provoked a letter from his actual manager, Jeannie. She wanted to know whether I would be “stepping in as his manager/promoter/assistant.” Her note was incredibly gracious, given the circumstances. She’d devoted two years of her life to Boris. Hell, she’d sold her house to fund the making of When We Were Big. But by late 2004, she was fed up. So were his bandmates. Much as they loved and revered Boris, they were tired of working for free. Boris himself was involved with a woman who had moved to New Mexico and was pressing him to head west.

  Thus, in addition to ad hoc manager, I now assumed the role of band therapist. I listened to everyone bitch about everyone else and made sympathetic noises and told them that yes, they had every right to be upset, absolutely, but they also needed to be patient and forgiving of each other. My folks were both psychiatrists, so this rap came easy to me.

  I might have been less determined had Erin not headed west herself, for grad school. But she was gone by September. Once again, I was a would-be lothario adrift in my thirties, an absurd figure in baggy sweaters and dumb facial hair. I knew adulthood lay waiting with its domestic props and duties, and this made me cling all the more dearly to the turbulent brotherhood of the band. Hanging out with them had become (I can now see) an idealized version of my youth, in which the brothers in question didn’t pound each other into hamburger, but had drug-addled sleepovers and shared secret nicknames and made beautiful music together. I’d been allowed to become a part of that, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to let it fall apart.

  In Which It Falls Apart

  Because of course it does.

  The half-life of any rock band boils down to a brutal formula: Ambition multiplied by Luck, divided by the Tolerance of Loved Ones. Boris told himself he wanted to be famous. He certainly wanted the conveniences of fame: money, respect, someone to drive you around places. But he resented the promotional labors involved, the necessary humiliations.

  His patter, for instance, was almost impressively incoherent and his mood sometimes ornery. One night, at an Irish pub in Newton, he introduced the guys in his band but neglected to mention his name.

  “Who are you?” someone yelled.

  “I’m Boris,” he snapped back. “Who the fuck are you?”

  As the final months played out, I began to feel less like an advocate and more like an enabler. Boris told me he needed money to print more copies of When We Were Big and I loaned him the dough. Then he needed more money, because he wanted to record another album, in New Mexico, and needed to fly Austin and his drummer Jeff out there, so I organized a Halloween fund-raiser at the Somerville VFW. I was back in the club promotion business, and just as bad at it as ever.

  After the party, I stood with Boris in my bedroom and handed him the take, a wad of twenties fat as an onion. He slashed figures down on a piece of paper and detailed what he was going to do with the money, as if I truly were his manager now, as if we were mapping out some grand strategy. I could see right then that the era we had shared was over, the money would evaporate and his mates would move on and maybe a record would get made, and maybe it wouldn’t, but the dream, which had something to do with fame but more to do with the redemption every fan seeks in offering his or her unconditional love,
that was over, too, because my patience had finally run out.

  “You figure it out,” I said, and I left him there, piling stacks of dirty bills on my bed.

  A Pony Ride to the Other Side

  This story is supposed to end with both of us retreating obediently into domestic lives, never to be heard from again. And it’s true that we did marry our long-suffering girlfriends, more or less in unison, though I believe Boris managed to get through the ceremony before knocking his bride up. It’s also true that Boris left Boston. He moved to New Mexico, to a tiny pueblo at eight thousand feet. His occasional e-mails spoke of solar panels, an outhouse, a second child. So I figured that might be that, I’d never see the palooka again. Then, in April of 2008, he called to tell me he was coming back east for a show in Woods Hole.

  “Have you told any of the old crew?” I said.

  “Huh,” he said. “You think I should?”

  I could feel the old promotional juices start to flow again. I could make some phone calls, get a caravan organized. But I didn’t have an afternoon. I had a pregnant wife and what the pediatricians call a “busy” toddler and not quite enough money. In the end, I drove down with my friend Mitch.

  We found Boris at the Community Hall in Woods Hole, a high-ceilinged building that appeared to be floating on Buzzards Bay. He was finishing up a sound check with his band for the night: his loyal bassist Bones and a sweet-natured guitarist named Brett. Boris looked a bit heavier. A stripe of whiskers ran down his chin. Bones was busy transcribing the chords for one of Boris’s new songs, which he was expected to perform in an hour. They filled an entire page. “‘Proud Mary’ has three fucking chords,” he said to Boris. “Why can’t you write a song like that?”

  At ten minutes to showtime, the crowd numbered a dozen. Both Mitch and I tried not to notice all the empty seats. Was this what it had come to? Boris couldn’t even draw folks in his hometown? But we had misread the locals. They showed up late: old-time hippies, families with fleeced children, teenagers hopped up on candy bars and hormones. Someone who brought a salt lick from her farm and set it onstage. We had underestimated Boris, too. His trio sounded lovely, even without a drummer and a proper rehearsal. His new songs killed. He told a story about getting into a fight with his wife and taking off driving and spotting an old Mexican man offering pony rides in an empty parking lot. Then he launched into a country stomper that sounded as happy-go-lucky as a song can, until you took note of the words:

  I’ve got a Special Forces wife

  with a tongue like a bowie knife

  Can I have a fucking pony ride?

  I want a pony ride to the other side

  I want a pony ride to change my rotten perspective

  And what was crazy about this song was that I, too, had just gotten into a fight with my wife, who did not have a tongue like a bowie knife but who did, like Boris’s wife, have a second child in her belly, and who had likewise grown tired of my selfish artistic needs as they related to my husbanding duties, and I too felt as guilt-ridden and enraged as Boris, as knee-deep in diapers and debt, as in need of a pony ride. The song rang my heart like a bell.

  The band kept playing and the songs did their mysterious human work. At half past nine, Boris announced that the last ferry was leaving for Naushon in a few minutes. Most of the crowd needed to catch that ferry, but nobody moved. Boris clamped a capo onto his guitar and murmured, “Okay then, we’ll play one more.” It was a lullaby he’d written for his daughter, a waltz, and it made everyone in that hall a little drunk. How strange life seemed to us then, how petty in its demands, everyone always needing to get somewhere. Outside, the moon was rising. The stars were arranging themselves above the sea with great patience. Boris stood in a black western shirt and played his old guitar. His voice never sounded so beautiful.

  Interlude:

  A Frank Discussion of My Mancrush on Bob Schneider

  I have to start here, because if I don’t my wife will eventually read this and say something like, “Aren’t you going to mention your massive mancrush?” to which I’ll respond, “Shut up! I so totally don’t have a crush on Bob!” to which she’ll respond, “Then why do you talk to the poster of him on your wall?” to which I’ll respond, “I admire him as a musician. Why do you have to make it into something dirty?” Then I’ll slam the door in her face and throw myself down on the bed and stare up at my Bob poster, the one with him looking all yummy and stubbled, and wail, “Don’t listen to her, Bob! She’s just jealous!”

  Nobody wants that.

  So let me start by noting that every Fanatic is entitled to at least one homoerotic crush, which means, for gay Fanatics, a heteroerotic crush, the point being that there’s some musician out there whose talents and manner and physical presence completely jam our normal sexual circuitry.

  This all started back in 2002 when I went to see Bob play for the first time. I expected ragged versions of the catchy stuff from his new album, Lonelyland. But Bob utterly destroyed the template. He thrashed his prettiest ditties into punk screamers. He segued from bluegrass to cabaret to drugged-out dub and made everything seem effortless. At one point—this was during a mambo—Bob swung his guitar behind his back and sped the time signature. His bandmates followed suit, including the keyboard player, who hoisted a very heavy-seeming electric piano onto the back of his neck. The song became a sweet torrent—and nobody missed a note.

  When it was time for an encore, his guitarist ripped off a Frampton talk-box solo circa 1978, which somehow led to a four-part harmony of “Mercedes Benz” only with guitar riff lifted from “Sweet Home Alabama,” though at a certain indefinable point you realized they were playing “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and none of this, not one note, came off as glib. On the contrary, these covers were entirely devout. Bob was saying to the crowd: Here’s where my music comes from. And here. And here.

  Though in fact, Bob spoke very little to the crowd. He didn’t jump around. He didn’t need to jump around. He had his chops to recommend him and his physical magnetism, which was that of a leading man—Tom Hanks, say, if you drained off the goofiness and retained only the required assets: the jaw, the penetrating gaze, the husky baritone. He knew there was a row of hotties camped beneath him in push-up bras and fellatio dreams. He could hear the frat boys hooting. He recognized the desires and pleasures of the crowd as a condition of his being. I’d never seen such poise.

  I had no idea who I was dealing with at that point. I didn’t know Bob had spent a decade fronting the two most raucous party bands in Austin’s hallowed party band tradition, that he appeared to know every song ever written, and to have written half of them himself, that he was (in short) not just a hunky troubadour but a variety of musical savant, the most charismatic and prolific songwriter of our proximate generation, the most fearless and versatile, and certainly the filthiest.

  Man Meet Mancrush

  A passel of label honchos appeared at Bob’s next Boston show. The place was mobbed and Bob had shaved for the occasion. During an instrumental break, he walked offstage and wandered over to the VIPs and I remember thinking, as I watched this brief and devastating charm offensive, How can you not make this guy a superstar? He’s destroying this club before your eyes. He writes hits in his sleep. He’s dating Sandra Bullock—and he’s better looking than Sandra Bullock.

  That’s not what happened, obviously. The next time I saw Bob, he was hidden behind a thick beard and he played a suite of songs so sad they could only have been the result of dashed love, meaning he and Sandra were splitsville. (Us Weekly had the deets.) Lonelyland had yielded one minor radio hit. The six months he’d spent in the studio trying to produce a commercial follow-up had nearly driven him mad.

  How did I know all this? Because it was my job as a Drooling Fanatic to acquire such details. I also did some minor stalking. This is how I discovered, a few shows later, that Bob had gotten married and had a son. I spotted him and his wife pushing a stroller down Commonwealth Avenue sever
al hours before his gig. I startled them by handing Bob a copy of one of my books, which I’d inscribed just in case I saw him.

  So now he was married. That was cool. It’s not like I wanted to marry the guy. What I wanted, as I explained to his publicist, was to spend a week on the road with him. This would allow me to document him writing songs about the colorful folk he encountered and jamming with his killer band and (last but not least) poolside escapades, meaning, in the greater interests of rock and roll, sunbathing in the nude together and doing bumps of coke off the greased pubic bones of teenage virgins. His publicist suggested a brief interview at his home as perhaps more realistic.

  On the morning of my interview, I woke with my gut in knots. I was in the Houston airport, waiting for a flight to Austin. The sky kept spitting threads of lightning and then, I shit you not, hail started to fall, making an eerie ping-sizzle on the roof of the terminal. My head was stuffed full of bad outcomes. The airport would close due to apocalyptic weather. Or no, better, I’d be electrocuted at 37,000 feet. Such are the dark visions that plague a Drooling Fanatic on the brink of meeting his mancrush.

  Bob lived west of town, in a development whose ambience suggested a suburban game preserve. I imagined a ranch, acres of rolling pine, a hayloft where we could go to be alone. But Bob’s house was small and nondescript. There were no cars in sight. A bouquet of white daisies was rotting beside the walkway. The lantern hanging above the front door was full of dead leaves. I rang the doorbell. Dogs started barking. After several uneasy minutes, two large canines came bounding toward me. Bob appeared behind them, pale and dazed. “I forgot you were coming by,” he said.

  How Not to Woo Your Mancrush

  Inside, I began sputtering in the precise manner I’d told myself not to sputter. I couldn’t stop myself, because I’d grown up in the shadow of two handsome brothers and developed the common American misconception that physical beauty makes people smarter and nobler, and because I was seeing Bob at his ugliest and he was still better looking than Christ.