by George Beahm
Not surprisingly, demand for this edition far exceeded supply. It was a feeding frenzy. Anxious fans besieged the publisher, offering up to $1,250 for a copy when it was first announced.
Today, twenty-four years after its publication, the $325 book predictably commands a collector’s price on the specialty market. Betts Books recently sold a copy for $1,850; copies online range in price up to $2,500.
If you are adamant about owning just one limited edition Stephen King book, get this one. It’s always held its value and will always be in demand because it’s the centerpiece of any King collection.
Insofar as limited editions go, fan favorites include The Eyes of the Dragon, because it’s from King’s own press; ’Salem’s Lot, because it’s oversized and classically designed; and Skeleton Crew, with J. K. Potter’s photo illustrations. But towering above them all is The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition. For die-hard King fans, it’s the book of choice in terms of its popularity, its production values, and its investment potential.
STEPHEN KING ON LIMITED EDITIONS
(from “The Politics of Limited Editions,” Castle Rock, July 1985)
A real limited edition, far from being an expensive autograph stapled to a novel, is a treasure. And like all treasures do, it transforms the responsible owner into a caretaker, and being a caretaker of something as fragile and easily destroyed as ideas and images is not a bad thing but a good one … and so is the re-evaluation of what books are what they do that necessary follows.
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MICHAEL COLLINGS ON FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT
1990
As with Different Seasons, which shares the overriding time metaphor both in its title and in the arrangement of its stories, each of the four tales in Four Past Midnight is virtually novel-length, each approaches the art of writing from different directions, each seems to belong to slightly different genres, and ultimately each varies in quality and evocative power.
“The Langoliers,” for example, shows the quintessential King at his best, spinning a tale of fantasy and horror. In what readers will recognize as vintage Twilight Zone fashion, characters discover that something has happened … and worse, that something unknown and indefinable is coming, threatening the eventual disintegration of everything (perhaps including time itself). King’s images of diminishing solidity, of worn-out matter, and of encroaching nothingness that is the Langoliers remain long after the story is over.
“Secret Window, Secret Garden,” on the other hand, belongs to a sequence of stories that anatomize the writer’s imagination and that includes Misery, The Tommyknockers, and The Dark Half. If Thad Beaumont is haunted by a murderous pseudonym, Morton Rainey is pursued by the specter of plagiarism personified in “his greatest creation—a character so vivid that he actually did become real.”
“The Library Policeman,” like so many of King’s finer shorter works, parallels psychic horrors with the deeper, darker horrors of “real life.” And, simply put, any horror story that depends for its climax on combining a variation on Heinleinian puppet masters with a wad of Bull’s Eye red licorice squashed on the railroad tracks deserves to be read.
“The Sun Dog” provides a narrative link between The Dark Half and Needful Things. In spite of the fact that the “sun” in question is a Polaroid camera—a “needful thing,” as it were, for young Kevin Delevan—King quickly connects that common, everyday object with an encroaching supernatural horror. In this story, King’s penchant for detail at times overwhelms his storytelling, so several pages, for example, are devoted to the relatively insignificant task of buying a roll of film. Similarly, when the Polaroid begins to develop and show something—the sun dog—moving inexorably closer to the barrier separating its world and ours, the story slows almost to a halt. One of the few tales that seem longer than required, it nevertheless prepared readers for what is to come in Needful Things.
Responses to the stories will vary with each reader, of course. Arguments as to which of the stories is the “best” will likely depend as much on the readers as on the stories. Of the four, however, “The Sun Dog” seems the weakest, particularly because it illustrates King’s occasional need for careful, stringent editing. “Secret Window, Secret Garden,” on the other hand, with its probing of diseased psychological states, resonates well with the earlier novels. Although none of the stories carries the weight and focus of “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” in King’s earlier quartet of tales (and arguably among his better performances), Four Past Midnight nevertheless demonstrates once again King’s unusual versatility and range of vision.
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ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS
I love rock ‘n’ roll. But writing is not like being a rock ‘n’ roll star. I think a lot of writers in my generation are closet rock and roll freaks. I would guess—I don’t think there’s ever been a survey done of this—that you would find a lot of closet air guitar players who know all the Eric Clapton solos and that sort of thing.
So when I write, I just crank the music. I inundate myself in rock and roll, and it kind of poisons the atmosphere around me so that people don’t approach me, unless they really, really want to get close—you know, ‘Steve, the house is burning down.’ That kind of thing.”
—STEPHEN KING, IN AN INTERVIEW PROMOTING BMG’s VIDEO RECORDING OF THE FIRST RBR CONCERT
As Kathi Kamen Goldmark explained, “In the fine rock & roll tradition, the Rock Bottom Remainders were conceived in a car. As a semi-pro musician with a day job in book publicity, I spent a lot of time driving touring authors around San Francisco … I decided to form a band of authors!”
King and Robert Fulghum face off in a “guitar-fest” at the first Rock Bottom Remainders concert in Anaheim, California, on May 25, 1992.
King in concert with the Rock Bottom Remainders in Bangor.
On May 25, 1992, the Rock Bottom Remainders1 made their first and second public appearances for booksellers. The first was billed as “The Rock Bottom Remainders Unplugged,” in which the band members appeared on stage in the grand ballroom of the Disneyland Hotel, where they sang two songs A cappella at Garrison Keillor’s “A Celebration for Free Expression: An Evening of Censored Classics.” The second appearance, later that night, was when they kicked out the jams; they plugged in guitars and cranked up the volume on their amps at a nearby club, the Cowboy Boogie.
You had to be there.
I was.
I wanted to be down on the floor, buying the autographed T-shirts, photos, and other memorabilia that raised money for three charities, including the Homeless Writers Coalition of Los Angeles, or dancing like crazy, but instead I was on a raised platform packed with other photographers who tinkered with their film cameras, wondering about their camera settings, because the light level was low and constantly changing.
So how was the music?
Not important.
So how much fun did everyone have?
Man, it was a blast, in every sense of the word. That place was rocking with traditionally sedate booksellers who got out on the dance floor and kicked it up: They turned out to be a pretty lively bunch!
What made it all the more remarkable was that the band members weren’t trained musicians; they were baby boomers who harbored daydreams of playing rock and roll in a band. They turned off their word processors to turn on the music and the audience—and had fun doing it, too.
“THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED”
When Kathi Kamen Goldmark passed on in 2012, the band members felt it was time to move on. As Stephen King—one of the original members—noted, things just didn’t seem the same afterward. Her death took the wind out of the band’s sails. The last concert, two decades after the first one, was for the members of the American Library Association, also in Anaheim.
Playing for fun, the Rock Bottom Remainders raised the roof onstage for two decades and in the process also raised $2 million for charity.
For the band members, it was a rare opportunity to get away from their day jobs, get
together to jam with other authors, and have a little fun just hanging out after hours, and in between gigs.
It did take a while for the band to get their act together. As recounted by Dave Barry in Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude, ringer Al Kooper listened to the first rehearsal and offered helpful suggestions like “Don’t play so loud,” “Don’t play at all,” and “I don’t think we should do this song.”
It was all in good fun.
Here’s a great moment, recalled by Dave Barry, when they were playing at a concert in Los Angeles:
I picked up one of the two guitars I’d been using, and just as we were about to start, Stephen King tapped me on the shoulder and said, “We have a special guest.” I turned around, and there was Bruce Springsteen. I still don’t know how he came to be at this convention; I don’t believe he’s a bookseller. All I know is, he was picking up the other guitar. My guitar. “Bruce,” I said to him, “Do you know the guitar part to ‘Gloria’?” This is like asking James Michener if he knows how to write his name.
Yesterday…
I was there, as I said, at their first two public appearances. When they toured, and when I had the time and opportunity, I got to a few more of their gigs. At one, in New York City, I remember seeing Neil Gaiman invited onstage by Stephen King to play the harmonica. And there was also a concert in Bangor, Maine, when King broke into a wide grin when he saw Warren Zevon play the guitar behind his head, a moment I was glad I caught on camera. (Sadly, Zevon passed away in 2003.) I remember that concert because a good friend of mine, the late Charlie Fried, with whom I had driven up from Connecticut, had paid for tickets for dozens of local teenagers who otherwise couldn’t afford to attend. (Charlie had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.)
King and the late Charlie Fried at the Betts Bookstore book signing.
…And Today: The Reunion
You can’t keep a good band down, though, and some of the remaining band members still wanted to rock and roll, so at the Tucson Festival of Books (March 14–15, 2015), Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Scott Turow, Ridley Pearson, Roy Blount Jr., Alan Zweibel, and Greg Iles plugged in, tuned up, and rocked on. As Barry commented to the local media before the concert: “‘Play’ is probably a strong term for what we do with our instruments, but we have them with us onstage for sure. I would say a better term is we hold our own instruments.”
But it wasn’t the same without Stephen (and still the) King there, who has unplugged for good—the day, King fans noted, the music died.
In Stephen King’s “The Neighborhood of the Beast,” from Mid-Life Confidential, King wrote, “Playing music again—playing for an actual audience—after all those years was fun. Well, actually it was a little more than fun; it had to have been, or the Three Chords and an Attitude Tour never would have gotten off the ground. It was, in fact, exhilarating.”
Now that’s music to anyone’s ears.
King in concert with the Rock Bottom Remainders in Bangor (1998).
A signed Rock Bottom Remainders print for their Miami ‘93 concert.
The late Warren Zevon and King at the Rock Bottom Remainders concert in Bangor (1998).
The late Warren Zevon plays his guitar behind his head, to Kings’ surprise, at the Rock Bottom Remainders concert in Bangor (1998).
1 The original band members, self-termed “The Anaheim Version”: Dave Barry, Tad Bartimus, Roy Blount, Jr., Michael Dorris, Robert Fulghum, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Matt Groening, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Al Kooper, Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh, Ridley Pearson, Joel Selvin, and Amy Tan.
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QUOTES BY AND ABOUT THE ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS
Quotes by the Band
SOLO
• Dave “His Mind May Be Full of Boogers and Dog Poop, But His Heart Is Full of Love” Barry (guitar and vocals): “We play music as well as Metallica writes novels.”
• Michael “Whoever Heard of a Man Named” Doris (percussion): “And so the Remainders played. Played, played, played. It was a sound to hear. And to forget.” (essay in Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
• Robert “But Then I Forgot It All in Grade School” Fulghum (mandocello, guitar, and vocals): “Anyhow, we’re in this hotel and this maid comes in and she keeps looking at me and she smiled and she said, ‘I know who you are.’ And I said, ‘No, you don’t. Who am I?’ And she said, ‘You’re Kenny Rogers.’ And of course I said, ‘No, no, no.’ And she said, ‘If you were Kenny Rogers you wouldn’t say you were Kenny Rogers, would you? So you must be Kenny Rogers.’ So that evening I’m walking along with my guitars going to the elevator and she went up like a skyrocket, ‘See! I knew you were Kenny Rogers!’ So I signed her card, ‘Love and kisses, Kenny Rogers.’” (Linda Richards, January magazine, date not listed)
• Kathi “the Queen of the Book Tour” Goldmark (band mother and Remainderette vocals): “I realized that I had a lineup of band members simply from the folks I was driving around. So one day I asked Dave and Barbara and Amy and a few others if they’d consider doing a rock show to raise money for charity. They said yes. When Stephen King came onboard, things really took off.” Hope Katz Gibbs, “Meet the Leader of the Band,” beinkandescent.com, April 2011.
• Matt “Happy Families Are All Alike” Groening (critics’ chorus): “People are throwing panties at you. They certainly never do that at my book-signings.” (general attribution)
• Stephen “and Still the” King (guitar and vocals), on their final concert after twenty years: “Since I’ve been on this tour, a lot of people have come up to me and said, ‘You guys don’t sound too bad, but don’t quit the day job yet.’ As if I’d quit my fucking day job! I like my day job!” (Carlin Romano, philly.com, 1993)
“I’m looking forward to reuniting with all my band mates.… Some of us can remember all of the words; all of us can remember some of the words; but NONE of us can remember all of the music. That’s why they call it rock and roll.” (marquee.blogs.cnn.com)
• Barbara “She May Be the Answer to Stephen” Kingsolver (keyboard and vocals): “We really thought it was a one-time thing. We didn’t count on this vampire syndrome. We’re kind of thinking about doing something new, like maybe a professional hockey team.” (Carlin Romano, philly.com, 1993)
• Al “He May Be a Mother-You-Know-What, but We All Call Him Dad” Kooper (keyboard and guitar), on when the band members found their musical “legs”: “This time we’re so much better because everybody really did their homework. We picked the songs via fax, and everyone really practiced hard, so when we came to rehearsal, it was like—we’re actually really playing music this time.” (Carlin Romano, philly.com, 1993)
• Greil “Elvis Is Dead in My Books” Marcus (critics’ chorus): “The idea of a tour—a heroic barnstorm down the East Coast, Massachusetts to Florida, just a happy-go-lucky troupe of crazy scribblers with their repertoire of sock-hop tearjerkers and frat-house drinking songs—struck me as utter lunacy, all but criminal hubris, the indulgence of infantile fantasies of mastery and sexiness by those less wise than I. I figured the jig would be up by the third gig at the latest.” (From “The Bosnian Connection,” Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
• Dave “I’ll Say ‘Fuck the Police’ If I Want To” Marsh (critics’ corner): “I never intended to become known for cross-dressing.… Yet … this is how I will best be recalled: appearing during rock ‘n’ roll’s ultimate teen death fantasy, ‘Teen Angel,’ while wearing a hideous transvestite getup, stalking Stephen King from beyond the grave into the wilds of imagination, covered in taffeta and fake blood.” (“Name of the Chapter—Broadway Chapter,” Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
• Ridley “He Do Know Diddly” Pearson (bass and vocals): “With the reserve lights on our fuel tanks, we were, by day, too close to empty. But not at curtain time. We became, in our own small way, professionals.… We took it on the road, and it worked. Every show was sold out. Every performance earned an enthusiastic en
core.” (“Cujo Meets the Booger Man: The Rehearsals,” Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
• Joel “If You Rearrange His Name It Spells Nelvis” Selvin (critics’ chorus): “All along the way, our fellow members of the press evidenced zero interest in the Critics’ Chorus. Dave Barry, yes. Amy Tan, maybe. But as long as Steve King was available, everybody was happy. ‘Stephen King, Others Killed in Crash’ went the joke on the tour bus.” (“The Critics Chorus,” Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
• Amy “If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of My Kitchen” Tan (Remainderette vocals): “We’ve chosen comedic songs for me, so it’s part of the act, that I don’t remember my lyrics. The songs are These Boots Are Made for Walking and Leader of the Pack. I wear costumes for both. For Boots I’m especially gifted. I wield a whip and at the end of the song, I tell the boys to bend over. The audience somehow forgets that I’m not a good singer, and they go wild!” (Noah Charney, The Daily Beast, 2013)
Acoustic Feedback
Entertainment Tonight reporter who couldn’t find the Big Name Writers before a Rock Bottom Remainders concert, to Tad Bartimus: “Where’s Dave Barry? Where’s King or Tan? Where are the real authors?” (“Chain of Fools,” Mid-Life Confidential, 1994)
Metallica (Kirk Hammett): “Rock Bottom Remainders? Who the hell are they?” (general attribution)
Bruce Springsteen, after playing in concert in Los Angeles with them: “Your band’s not too bad. It’s not too good, either. Don’t let it get any better; otherwise, you’ll just be another lousy garage band.” (general attribution)
Tabitha King: “Somebody had to do photographs for the RBR tour. Since I was going along anyway and had been seen working a camera at the rehearsal for the Anaheim ABA show, I was asked to do it. Let’s get it right out front. I didn’t get paid enough.” (“I Didn’t Get Paid Enough,” Mid-Life Confidential)
