If I were going to be honest about the way I felt about that invitation, the prior sentence would be in italics and caps and followed by many exclamation points. Being successful allows you to meet lots of interesting, accomplished, and famous folks. But to me writers were and are the stars that rock my world. And the idea of hanging around with that bunch—AT DAVE BARRY’s HOUSE!—approached the surreal. What do I remember? Mitch was on the phone. (He was always on the phone in those days.) Ridley gave all indications of being the nicest person in the world (sometimes first impressions are correct). Dave was incredibly funny (Duh). Michelle Kaufman, Dave’s wife and a popular sports writer at the Miami Herald, was a warm hostess. And I found Erasmo, Ridley’s longtime friend, a comforting Yoda-like presence.
As the afternoon wore on, I became more nervous because there was not a lot of rehearsing going on. We were mostly eating cold cuts and schmoozing and watching football. Mitch and I talked about Dustin Hoffman, who was involved in film adaptations of recent books of each of ours. Finally, Dave and Ridley strummed their way through the chords to “Wild Thing” and assured me that there was really no way to fuck up that song (a feat I in fact accomplished repeatedly right up to the band’s last performance in LA). Eventually, we got into a van for a trip to the venue, in which, in my state of high anxiety, I said a number of inappropriate things that everybody seemed to think were kind of funny. Events continued to feel extraterrestrial. When we arrived, the backstage area was a boat in the water, on which there were more totally starry type people, like Carl Hiaasen and Warren Zevon. At some point, I dug out half a Xanax I had in my pocket. And eventually came forward to perform. I figured WTF. Here I was with the world-famous RBRs for the first and last occasion, let it go, and I did. I was almost on key in the two lines I actually sang and was very loud, in any event. I hugged everybody after the performance and went back to my real life.
A few months later, Dave called. They wanted me in the band. When I started to detail my ineptitude, he interrupted. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “Once you’re in, you can’t get out.” I was stunned. On the other hand, I reasoned, think how many rock bands would be better off traveling with their own criminal lawyer.
Dave explained to me that I would be introduced as one of the chick singers doing background vocals, a group that included at times Amy and Kathi and Mitch’s wife, Janine, whose vocal power is reminiscent of Cher. In those days, the Remainders were doing a shtick in which Janine was picked out of the audience as a volunteer to sing with the band. Then she would come onstage and blow everybody away. Janine was once described to me as the only person I would ever meet who’d been played in a movie (the adaptation of Mitch’s autobiographical Tuesdays with Morrie) by a beautiful Hollywood star who was not even close to as good-looking as she is. Poor Janine spent the next twelve years singing beside me from time to time, with one finger in her ear, so that her harmonizing was not thrown off by my happy vocalizing in the key of H.
What I lacked in musical ability, I tried to make up for in shamelessness. I came onstage during that first tour with a huge blond shock wig that I appropriated from my drummer son (a real professional musician). I realized instinctively, given my musical talent, that the only way I could earn my keep in the band was as a sight gag. And so it went. When the first wig met with approval, I bought a rayon rainbow-striped number at Walgreens. Amy and Kathi each gifted me additional wigs over the years. In a feather boa, a wig, and sunglasses—to keep the plastic hair out of my eyes—I trotted onstage for the next thirteen years, sang in H (when something really serious was happening, like Roger playing with us, I know they sometimes deadened my mike at the sound board), and did my own version of dancing during musical interludes. Occasionally, Kathi and I jitterbugged. Often Erasmo descended from the risers with his sax to boogie beside me. And a lot of the time I was there on my own, throwing in what Ted, the band’s magnificent producer, described as unsanctioned moves. Dave, who knows a little bit about what’s funny, always encouraged me.
SCOTT’S SPRING 2013 LOOKBOOK (1 of 2)
SCOTT’S SPRING 2013 LOOKBOOK (2 of 2)
Over the years, I got a couple of numbers of my own. I suggested “Runaway,” the number-one hit when I was in eighth grade. The screeching falsetto in the middle of the song, which I rarely sang without a piercing voice crack, was perfect for me. I also took up Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby,” which I struggled with at times, until I realized that the harmonica introduction, always beautifully performed by Sam, began with my opening note. A few years ago, Dave decided it would be amusing if I performed “I Fought the Law,” the old Bobby Fuller Four standard, one of the simplest songs ever written and thus one that I sometimes didn’t mess up. There were, of course, more ambitious efforts that proved well beyond me. For instance, “And She Was” by the Talking Heads was far out of my comfort zone. The singing was actually not as hard for me as the unrhymed lyrics. At one performance, Judi Smith, Dave’s amazing friend and assistant, handed out fans with large photos of Dave pasted on Popsicle sticks (“I’m a Dave Barry fan,” get it?), and I pasted the lyrics to “And She Was” on the back of mine, making sure the audience could see me turning the pages as I sang.
No matter how big a thrill performing with the band was for everybody else, it was double that for me, because if there was even a little justice in the world, I might have been forbidden from humming in the audience, let alone singing onstage. Ridley, Mitch, Greg, Kathi, Sam, Janine have all done stints as professional musicians. Amy was a classically trained pianist. And countless surprised rock critics across the country have allowed that Dave is actually a pretty good guitarist. I, on the other hand, was me. No matter who in the band we were talking about, each was Beethoven when compared to Turow. Even the late Frank McCourt, who could never remember his harmonica numbers, at least could actually play an instrument.
In that vein, the biggest high of all for me came from taking the stage with Roger McGuinn, the greatest twelve-string guitar player in the world. The first heartbreak of my life had come in my sophomore year in college, when my high school girlfriend dumped me. I spent hours in my dorm room wailing The Byrds’ “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” even though, frankly, I did not feel a whole lot better when she was gone. The first time I got to join the chick singers on that chorus, I goose-bumped and grew teary as I sang unwritten notes, while Roger rendered the anthems of our youth. The idea that I, a true no-talent bum, was singing background for beloved performers like Roger or Judy Collins, who joined us for one tour, or Warren or Leslie Gore...I mean, really.
The thrills onstage, deep as they were, were a small pleasure compared to the friendships shared over the years. We all truly, deeply, passionately love one another. Yes, we learned one another’s faults. But it is a dear group of brilliant and deeply decent people who relish one another’s company. One of the secrets of the band, I always thought, was that most of us did not live in New York and thus did not have access to a large literary community. Being a successful writer in this country is a wonderful experience, but a rare one, and with the band, we were each, for a time, among peers. Mitch liked to point out that you could get on the bus and sit in any open seat and end up having the best conversation you’d enjoyed in weeks. There was no limit on the subject matter, although Dave tried to forbid any actual talk about being a writer—I guess because we were pretending to be musicians—but occasionally Ridley and Greg and I would hide from him in the back of the vehicle and huddle for actual discussions of craft. On the other hand, in one of my first meals with the band, I listened to Tabby King, Steve’s wife, and Dave speculating about the nigh-invisible nature of birds’ dicks. The night before our last performance, Erasmo and I sat with James and listened to him speak serenely about the nature of forgiveness, a conversation Ras and I were still marveling about the next day. On the last bus trip back to the hotel following our final performance, we drew abreast of another bus on the highway. Steve, because he is Steve, looked up and said,
“What if we looked over there and saw that everyone on the bus was one of us, except they were dead?”
The band was a family experience, not only because we were so close emotionally, but because family really was part of it. Willing spouses were always integral participants, including onstage. Dave got Michelle, a native Spanish speaker, and in later years, their daughter, Sophie, to sing a smokin’ version of “La Bamba,” while his son Rob’s wife, Laura, performed “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” several times. Amy’s husband, Lou, another Yellow Dog D (and lawyer), who rushed with me to a TV set to check on the Florida recount whenever the bus stopped during our tour in 2000, took pratfalls during Amy’s rendition of “Leader of the Pack,” until he broke his collarbone doing it. After that, he came onstage once on a Segway, but he still dove to the floor out of team loyalty in both of our last two performances. Camilla, Roger’s wife, sometimes helped at the soundboard. Marcelle Pearson, Rid’s spouse, played the teen angel mourned in the tune of the same name that Steve sang. Tabby frequently danced at the back of the stage. And Ellen McCourt performed a lovely a cappella ballad the time the band arrived in New York after Frank’s death. Partners who didn’t care for the lights were also “in the band” anyway, experts at the main band activity, which was just hanging out. Joan Griswold, Roy’s wife and a well-known artist, was on the bus for most of the tours I saw. And the best late addition was clearly Ted’s girlfriend, Lisa Napoli, an author and former reporter for NPR’s Marketplace. When we met Lisa, several members of the band independently gave Ted the same advice: “Don’t screw this up.”
For a while, I believed that the band’s funniest experiences had all occurred before I joined. Then I realized it only seemed that way because, generally speaking, prior events—like the time a T-shirt store owner in Cleveland mistook Steve King for Stephen Spielberg—were being recounted by Dave. Ted, who for years flawlessly negotiated the details of the tours and the shoals of our exotic personalities, believes the most hilarious evening with the band concluded with Dave waking up the next morning with the words NO SPLEEN written on his hand. Somehow, over drinks, following a performance in New York, I’d mentioned to Dave and Roy that I’d been advised years ago to have my spleen removed. Dave thinks Roy is the funniest person in the world, except when both of them hang that title on Josh. (Members of the Barry family occasionally vote for Sam.) Anyway, everybody who was there was in rare form. Most of what went on was byplay between Roy and Dave, who every now and then would somehow return to wondering about my spleen and then riff together on subjects like what a spleen does anyway (primarily filters blood), and whether you can live without one (yes), and thus whether I was alive or dead (no comment).
Life is sometimes an absolute bitch, as we all know, and my time with the band embraced several somber moments. Frank, the last Beatle, as it were, and Warren left us far too soon. Kathi, who thought the whole thing up, was not alive to see it end, perhaps a mercy in a way because she loved the band so much. Steve and Greg were both seriously injured in car wrecks, and Sam was treated for prostate cancer. There were other extended illnesses. And a number of us got divorced.
But I’ve always believed that the down stuff makes the light shine more brightly during the good times. And for me, my time with the band will always be haloed in memory by incredible radiance. It was simply a joy.
The Cleveland T-Shirt Shop
Matt: We were in a T-shirt shop in Cleveland...first of all, the T-shirt shop was several blocks from the [Rock And Roll] Hall of Fame where the T-shirts at the Hall of Fame were very pricey.
Dave: It was the High Profile T-shirt shop, High Profile was the name of the shop.
Matt: And you, Dave, and Stephen King, went to this T-shirt shop because there were bootleg T-shirts and they were cheap, right?
Dave: I wouldn’t say that was the reason...
Matt: I followed you guys and the guy at the T-shirt shop said, “I know you! I know you!” to you and [Stephen] “You guys are famous!”... And, who did he say he was?
Dave: He said, “You’re Stephen Spielberg!”
And Stephen said, “This happens to me all the time. They know I’m famous and they know my name is Stephen but they don’t know who I am.” So the guy made the whole staff come out to get a picture with Stephen Spielberg. And he was so insistent that Steve said, “Okay, we’ll do it.”
They do the picture and then finally—because we’re all laughing and talking about it—he finally realizes that it’s not Stephen Spielberg, it’s Stephen King. So he makes the whole staff come back out for another picture.
And then Matt tells him that I’m George Lucas. So he brings the whole... And I’m saying, “I’m NOT George Lucas!” And he brings the whole staff back out and the guy finally believes me. I showed him my driver’s license. And he goes, “Well I better not hear you were in town.”
—Interview with the Remainders, Besides the Music, April 2003
Q&A: Scott Turow’s spleen?
Q&A with the Remainders
Q: Does Scott Turow have a spleen?
A:
“I don’t think he has one.”
“Yes, I think Scott Turow has a spleen. But he hides it under a bushel. He should let it out, and go ahead and shut down Amazon.com.”
“He did, until that night we ate it.”
“I don’t know, because the note on my arm has washed off.”
Two Truths and a Lie
Two of the following statements about Dave are true. Which one is a lie?
Select a choice:
Dave wrote a song about Joseph and Mary being turned away from the inn, which he performed in church.
Dave once shook Richard Nixon’s hand.
Dave once got drunk and passed out on the chief of police’s lawn.
Results: Two Truths and a Lie
See what percentage of the Remainders and all other readers picked each answer
Dave Barry wrote a song about Joseph and Mary being turned away from the inn, which he performed in church. Readers: 27%
Remainders: 17%
Dave once shook Richard Nixon’s hand. Readers: 55%
Remainders: 83%
Dave once got drunk and passed out on the chief of police’s lawn. Readers: 18%
Remainders: 0%
What I Learned in the Remainders
by Dave Barry
LESSON ONE: You should know your limits, which you will probably reach somewhere before that eighth vodka gimlet.
I learned this lesson in New York City. The Remainders had played a gig, and afterward, as was our postshow tradition, we gathered in a quiet setting to sip herbal tea and reflect upon the works of Marcel Proust.
I am, of course, kidding. Our tradition was to go to the hotel bar and get semiloud. That particular night I ended up sitting next to Scott, who for some reason was telling, or attempting to tell, a lengthy and detailed anecdote involving his spleen. I say “attempting,” because I—and here is where gimlet consumption may have been a factor—was having a lot of trouble following this anecdote, and specifically, the question of whether Scott did, or did not, have a spleen. I kept interrupting him and saying, “Wait. I don’t get whether you’re saying that you do have a spleen, or you don’t have a spleen.”
Each time Scott would have to pause his anecdote and tell me, yet again, exactly where he stood, spleenwise. Then he would resume the anecdote. I would listen for a while, then drift into some other conversation and perhaps order another vodka gimlet. Time would pass, and I would tune back in to Scott, and once again, I would find myself to be unclear on the whole spleen/no-spleen question, so I would again interrupt Scott and ask him for clarification. This happened three or four times, until finally Scott, in the interest of finishing the anecdote before dawn, borrowed a marking pen from somebody and wrote NO SPLEEN in large capital letters on my right forearm. I was not in any way offended by this: I viewed it as a welcome and handy information resource that I could refer to whenever I needed it, which
was several more times before the anecdote finally ended.
So anyway, the evening swirled on, and eventually we all staggered off to our respective rooms and lapsed into varying degrees of coma.
The next morning, we had to catch a train to Boston. I was jolted from sleep at seven a.m. by the hotel wake-up call. I rolled, groaning, out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. As I passed the mirror, I caught sight of myself and noticed that I had something written on my skin. I looked down at my arm, and...
Ohmigod.
OHMIGOD.
OH. MY. GOD.
It took me maybe eight seconds to remember that the NO SPLEEN on my arm did not refer to my personal spleen. But those were eight seconds of pure terror. We have all heard the awful stories of the traveling businessperson who accepts a drink—possibly a gimlet—from a friendly stranger in a bar and wakes up the next morning in a bathtub filled with ice because one or more of his kidneys has been taken by a gang of kidney harvesters. That’s what I thought had happened to me, except with spleen harvesters.
Fortunately, as my brain rebooted, I realized that there was no evidence that anybody had cut me open and removed my spleen. To be honest, I don’t know exactly where my spleen is, but I could see that I had no fresh wounds on my body, although my head did feel as though a team of musk oxen had been using it as a trampoline.
Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All Page 6
