“Good evening,” she said. She reached into her purse and produced a small black box, which she handed to Quinn. “A present for you.”
He took the box. “A pager? Why?”
“Because I’m tired of not being able to reach you. I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she said. They’d been incommunicado because they’d played another gig during the afternoon, an unplugged AIDs benefit at Venice Beach. They’d come directly to the club without going home. “I have some news,” Lorraine continued, still smiling.
Quinn gave a sign to Ty over at the bar and waited until he, Dan, and Dave congregated around them. “What’s the news?” he asked.
Lorraine’s smile widened. “I’ve received an offer from Cardinal. And it’s a good one. A damned good one.”
Four hundred thousand dollars. Four hundred thousand dollars! Even Quinn was speechless. And this was just the beginning. There would be royalties, and tour revenues, and personal appearance fees. This was an advance, Lorraine explained, against the profits of the albums they were expected to produce, six, according to the offer.
They were elated and ready to sign right away, everyone but Quinn. He wanted artistic freedom and he wanted it in writing. “They could dictate our creative direction, soften us up,” he insisted when the rest of them freaked. “Our sound is unique, so we can’t let ourselves be force fit into some preexisting niche. I won’t settle for anything less. I’d rather go with an indie label.”
Lorraine worked hard to change his mind, but Quinn was obdurate. He wouldn’t budge, even when Cardinal countered with a higher offer. By then the buzz surrounding them had spread and other labels were developing an interest, sending out feelers.
Before long, a third offer was forthcoming. Four albums, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and full artistic control for the band. Songs and compositions. Producer approval. Video concepts. Everything.
Quinn was jubilant, the rest of them less so at the reduced figure. At Lorraine’s suggestion, the bulk of the money was banked to cover the expenses they would incur while recording their debut album. Studio time was costly, she reminded them, and she was negotiating with high-end producers. After two hundred thousand was salted away and she presented each of them with a check for ten thousand dollars, though, the complaints dwindled.
Shan didn’t complain at all. Ten thousand dollars, all hers? She was dazed.
What would she do with it? She needed so many things. A new electric guitar. A car. A real bed, but she was afraid to spend any of it, as if they might take it back. She was used to getting by with very little, so she deposited the check and guarded it like a miser. Her resolve lasted until the next time she went to the Guitar Center and saw the rows of electric guitars. Then and there she decided to spend some of her money on a new electric, but which one?
She’d always lusted after a Gibson, the hollow-body ES, but it was bulky and she liked to move when she played. The vintage Stratocaster she’d been eying was smaller, but heavier. Electric guitars were always heavy, though. Even the Peavey made her shoulder hurt after a long set and this model was lighter than most. It was so pretty, too, cream and chrome, and its tone was fantastic, ringing out clear and glassy on the high end.
The ES had a completely different character. The sound was thicker, more like an acoustic, with clean highs and gritty lows. Its fat, rich timbre was perfect for mournful tunes like “Sinner’s Blues” or “Wanderlust,” but she preferred the Strat for shredding.
What to do? She’d wanted a new electric for years, but now that she had the means she couldn’t make up her mind.
Then she remembered. She had ten thousand dollars! She bought them both.
Just like that, more than a third of her money disappeared. She was a little embarrassed when she arrived home with the two beauties and expected Quinn to scold her, but he was delighted.
She couldn’t wait to begin playing them and she didn’t have to, because Lorraine was right. Cardinal wanted Quinntessence in the studio immediately. They needed a producer and met with a series of them, all of whom Quinn nixed. He had a different reason for each rejection. Different vision. Lack of chemistry. Too commercial. He finally approved one, but insisted upon visiting the studio where they’d be recording before he would sign anything.
Shan was dazzled by the space, all chrome and slanted glass windows with the biggest console she’d ever seen. Not Quinn, though. He ignored the fancy equipment, instead walking around the bright, shiny studio space, pausing here and there to clap his hands.
After he’d finished, he came into the control room, where the rest of them were looking over the console. “Who chose this space?”
“I did,” said the hapless producer.
“You’re fired. Sorry.” Quinn turned and walked out, leaving the rest of them gaping.
When his bandmates protested, he was scathing. “Every room has its own sound that becomes part of the music, almost like another instrument. That room doesn’t. It’s an anechoic chamber. We record anything in that, it’s going to sound dry and tasteless, crappy as dehydrated dog shit.”
The next producer that Lorraine presented to them was Michael Santino, a soft-spoken man with olive skin and long curly hair. They’d all heard of him. He was one of the top guys in the industry and he cost a fortune. Just to get him in the studio would eat up half their advance, but Lorraine lobbied hard for him. He was the best, she said, with a reputation for bringing in nothing but winners. His skill at dealing with temperamental artists was renowned, too, she added when Quinn was out of earshot.
Santino owned and operated his own studio, Limelight Records, which Quinn insisted upon visiting as well. It was a big, dark, ugly room with layers of thick waffle board and heavy black fabric coating the walls. It looked like a haunted house.
As before, Quinn ignored the equipment in the control room and headed directly for the studio. He moved from the vocal room to the drum booth and back to the larger common area, clapping his hands. He spent a long time in there, longer than any other place they’d seen.
Eventually, Santino flipped a switch. “So, what do you think, Quinn?”
He turned around. He was smiling. They had a producer.
Two weeks later they were in the studio. A month after that, they’d finished preliminary recording on their debut album, Quinntessence: Innocence. By April the project was complete and in June the album was released.
Shan poked her head into the house. “Come and look at it!”
Chuckling, Ty accompanied her outside. Dan and Denise followed and found her capering with excitement as she pointed out all the features of the forest-green Jeep parked in the driveway.
“It’s got four-wheel drive and a car phone and look at these speakers! The stereo didn’t have great sound, so I ordered a whole new system. What do you think?”
“I think it’s great,” Ty said. “It’s time you finally got your own set of wheels.”
“I had to do something with all this money! Do you know that, when my alarm went off this morning, ‘Black Mile’ was playing on the radio?” she said, her sneakered feet doing a jig on the driveway. “I went and dragged Quinn out of bed to make him listen to it.”
As they went back into the house, Shan glanced into the music room. “Lorraine says we need to find another place to practice. She thinks the space is limiting us.”
“I think she’s right,” Dan said. “How long are we going to live in this shack, anyway? I’m sick of the hot water running out after two minutes. Besides, if the album does okay, I’m thinking Denise and I might buy a house.”
“I think you can start looking,” said Quinn. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his forearms crossed over his chest and a magazine tucked under his arm. He was wearing jeans, a Rush T-shirt, and the biggest shit-eating grin Shan had ever seen.
“Why? What did you hear?” she asked him.
“Nothing I didn’t expect. Just that we” —he slipped the magazine out from under his ar
m and they saw it was a copy of Billboard—“are on the motherfucking charts. ‘Black Mile.’ Number fifty-six. With a bullet,” he added, just before he was drowned out by a rebel howl from Ty.
part three
1992–1994
Girls have got balls.
They’re just higher up, that’s all.
—Joan Jett
chapter 32
Shan pushed the suitcase closed, then attempted to engage the lock. The sides of the suitcase wouldn’t meet over its bulging contents. “This is not going to work, Suge.”
Sugaree wagged her tail in response. She was reclining on Shan’s futon, no easy feat since it was rolled up and tied into a shape resembling a burrito. She fit atop it nicely, though. They’d celebrated her first birthday a month before, but she was still petite. She’d grown into a lovely dog, slim and graceful, with a shining black coat and a long, aristocratic snout that pointed to some greyhound in her lineage, or maybe whippet.
“I think you need your own bag,” Shan told her, extracting a collection of squeak toys, a water bowl, and two partially chewed Nylabones from the suitcase. One of them caught on the cup of a lacy bra and Shan paused to unwind the thread from the bone.
Quinn poked his head through the doorway. “The movers are here,” he said. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Almost, but I’m having trouble fitting Sugaree’s things in my bag.”
Quinn snorted. “She’s a dog. How many things does she need?”
She held up the toys in one hand and the water bowl in the other. Quinn went back to his own room, rooted through a box, and returned with a backpack into which he stowed Sugaree’s toys, brush, food bowls, extra leash, and a box of treats. After that he rolled up her dog bed, maneuvered it between the pack’s shoulder straps, and handed the bag to Shan.
Then he turned his attention to her suitcase. He flipped items left and right, extracted and rolled a few pieces of clothing, replaced them and fastened the bag closed. “Packed,” he pronounced. She knew that the items in his own bags, already neatly stacked in the downstairs hallway, would have been arranged and stowed with the precision of a Tetris game. He was anal that way, but he’d become even more so since they began spending most of their lives on the road.
It felt like the members of Quinntessence had only just gotten back from their first tour, but already it was time for the second one. Shan knew it would be a crazy, confusing kaleidoscope of concert halls, hotel rooms, restaurants, and highways, just like the first tour had been.
When Quinntessence: Innocence was released nearly nine months before, it had performed quite well. “Black Mile” had achieved hit status, rising to an impressive number sixteen on the national chart, and Cardinal had been quick to pluck another single from the album, “Voluntary Exile.” They’d commissioned a video, at which point Quinntessence was assigned a production manager and a rep from the artist and repertoire department, then turned over to a team of stylists tasked with creating a “brand” prior to the shoot. All of them received a makeover and Quinn insisted upon personally approving every suggestion made by Rachel, their A&R rep. He had only cursory comments about the looks proposed for any of the male band members, even his own, but he had strong opinions about Shan’s.
“She’s the face of the band, so she shouldn’t look too girly,” he said. “Not trashy, either. I don’t want her coming across as a Madonna or Cyndi Lauper clone. As a musician, Shan has an edge. She’s unique and her look should reflect that.” And it did, when the stylists were finished with her. They’d primped, plucked, and waxed her to within an inch of her life. They’d made her get her teeth fixed, put her on a regular regime of facials to improve her skin, and tinted her hair, giving it a purplish sheen that she thought looked cool.
Next they turned to her wardrobe, fastening on to the hippie boho style that she favored and suggesting enough quirky touches and accessories to give her a look all her own. She now wore her favorite hot-pink baby doll dress with Doc Martens and oversized sunglasses, her hair rolled up into a high, messy bun to reveal chunky turquoise earrings. She performed in a flowing, cambridge floral print with gladiator sandals and a long linen scarf. She was photographed for a Spin interview in low-rise denim shorts and a brief, lacy tank, with her hair cascading from the back of a black leather baseball cap and studded ankle boots on her feet. She loved the clothes, although she felt like she was in costume every time she went out.
Quinn’s look didn’t change much. His preference in clothing was simple, good cuts and muted colors, and he still dressed that way, although his stylist had outfitted him with a dozen pairs of soft leather pants that made his derriere look like a sculpture. Dan suffered from the heat onstage, so he preferred Jams and wife-beaters, or going shirtless altogether. This was permitted, but Rachel produced a collection of funky vests and engaged a personal trainer to give some definition to his abs. Ty’s look fell somewhere between hip-hop and beatnik while Dave, the peacock of the band, acquired an array of bright scarves and studded belts that he wore with tight jeans and spandex T-shirts snug enough to reveal his killer physique.
“Voluntary Exile” debuted at number thirty-two, leapt to the twelve spot when the video hit the channels, and Cardinal sent the band on tour. It meant four months on the road, Lorraine explained, although they were expected to be back in California no later than October 1 to begin recording their next album.
Four months? “What about Sugaree?” Shan had asked Quinn.
He frowned. “I don’t think we should bring her, Shan. Maybe next time, but she’s too little to be stuck on a bus for that long. Let’s see if Denise will keep her.”
Denise was delighted to dog sit. She’d been recently promoted to a full staff photographer position at the Weekly and had no desire to give it up in order to follow the band around. Since she’d be the only one in the house while the others were on tour, she was happy for some company.
The tour commenced with Quinntessence playing a series of openers, R.E.M. in Philly, the Smashing Pumpkins in New York, and the Spin Doctors in Charleston. They appeared alongside Siouxsie and the Banshees and Liz Phair, even played Lollapalooza with Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails.
For four months the tour bus was home, a forty-five-foot coach complete with a shower, kitchen, well-stocked bar, even a laundry room. It comfortably accommodated all five of them as well as the driver, a curmudgeonly fellow named Fred. Most nights they stayed in hotels that ranged from the five-star Carlyle in New York to the downright scary Peach Bottom Inn in Mobile, Alabama. Their Tulsa show coincided with an aerospace convention, so they wound up at a fleabag where the accommodations included a herd of cattle in an adjacent feedlot that bellowed all night long and a used condom that fell out of a bath towel Shan was unfolding.
She called Quinn’s room. “I can’t take a shower!”
“Why not?”
She told him. “It’s lying on the floor, like a snake. I can’t bring myself to touch it!”
He was there in a flash to dispose of the offensive object for her, but had a good laugh later when he regaled their bandmates with the story. Condom jokes were a guaranteed hit these days, since the bus held an apparently endless supply. There was a big bowl of them, all colors and varieties, on the coffee table in the common area. They turned up everywhere, on the counters, in the bunks, garnishing the frozen margaritas Dave liked to whip up in the galley. Once Dan woke from a particularly savage bender to find his entire body festooned with them, like a safe-sex Christmas tree. Fred kept the blue bowl stocked, grumbling when he saw how rapidly its stores were depleted.
It was a matter of serious contention to Shan, too, how quickly the condom bowl was emptied. Her bandmates regularly utilized the bus to avail themselves of the groupies who materialized after every show. She’d raised it as an issue more than once. “I think it’s disgusting,” she told Quinn, Dave, and Ty. Dan appeared to be maintaining a monogamous state, at least in front of her. If he wasn’t, she didn’t
want to know. “All three of you had girls in there at the same time after the Dallas show.”
“We used different bunks, though,” Dave assured her.
Shan wrinkled her nose. “That’s just nasty, and I couldn’t even come on board to change my clothes. It’s so disrespectful, the way you treat those girls.”
“They’re not girls,” Quinn said. “They’re groupies.”
“They’re still people,” she insisted.
“Barely. You ought to know by now that they’re a different species. Groupies are like cats in heat. You can do anything to them and they beg for more.”
Shan refrained from further comment, before he said anything more specific about what he did to them. She didn’t want to know that, either. She already knew far too much about his sex life as it was. Quarters were adequate, but tight, and there were no secrets on the bus.
Occasionally they had to drive through the night to make it to the next show on time. As the only female, Shan was awarded the master stateroom, which boasted the most comfortable bed, a full-sized queen, as well as a loveseat that unfolded into an additional berth. There was a pull-out couch in the common area for sleeping, as well as four bunks curtained for privacy and a tiny compartment behind the driver’s seat where Fred napped during the day.
The upper bunks were the least desirable sleeping quarters, especially after both Dave and Quinn were launched out of them in Minnesota, when Fred slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a moose on the road. Whenever they had to spend the night on board after that, Dave slept on the couch in the common area while Quinn took possession of the pull-out in Shan’s stateroom. He was in there all the time anyway, since they used the space for composing while they traveled from city to city, show to show.
Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) Page 29
