“Sounds great,” Lunky says. “I would really like one too. My dad was the president of the Hell’s Angels.”
“The band isn’t buying anyone Harleys,” EJ yells. “Who’s gonna make a food run?”
“So, Felder, let’s talk about producers,” the Jovi says. “Did you talk to Glyn Johns?”
“No. He’s in Gstaad.”
“What about Mutt Lange. Did you call him?”
“No. He’s in Bora Bora.”
“What about George Martin?” Kurt asks.
“You guys don’t want George Martin. What’s he done?”
“The Beatles!”
“Lately! What’s he done lately?”
“So, who’s going to produce our album?” Eric asks.
“You don’t want some big producer to come in and ruin your songs, do you, Kurt?”
“I don’t want anyone to ruin our songs. But I mean George Martin—he’s a genius. Mutt Lange—that guy totally gets the rock sound. Glyn Johns—he’s more of that mellow seventies rock thing, but he’s done some good Stones and Zeppelin classics. I want to work with someone good.”
“I’ve got just the right guy in mind.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“What the fffff…,” EJ stutters.
“I can produce you guys. You heard Bernie. He would’ve released the demo as an album. We can do better than that. It’ll be you guys, me, and this great producer who does all of Neil Young’s albums—Kostas Greco.”
“I don’t know, Felder. I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Kurt says.
“You guys don’t need changes in arrangements, you don’t need new instrumentation, you just need great takes and great sounds. Me and Kostas, we can do that.”
“Look, Felder. If you’re talking about Thunderstick produced by Thunderstick, I’m down with that,” EJ says. “But what have you ever produced before.”
“Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.”
“Shit…” EJ shakes his head.
“Who got you the biggest record deal any unsigned band ever got in history? Well? Who did?” Silence. “I did. The buzz, the hype, the deal—who produced all of it? Now if I can do that, I can do this.”
Kurt looks as if his head were in some invisible vice. He sits down in his Mustang, looks at the steering wheel, and rubs his ears and opens his jaw. “Can you at least call George Martin?”
Felder squats next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine.”
EJ says, “Hey, Felder, give us a little alone time here.”
“Fine. Of course. You guys talk it over.” Felder starts for the door. “You want to record the album in two weeks, right? You want to be on shelves by September when the kids go back to school, right? You want to keep your own sound, right? Look, it’s June already. You want to keep on schedule, keep your own sound, make a great record, then it’s gotta be me and Kostas and you. We’ll make a great album. I guarantee it.”
“Just give us a minute. Okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve got stuff to do anyway. Think it over. Hey, meet me at this club tonight. You’re on the list.” Felder scribbles on a card and hands it to the Jovi. “Talk to these guys. You’ll do the right thing. I’m sure of it.”
EJ closes the big sliding door behind Felder and says to the wall: “This can happen, but we’ve basically got to produce it ourselves. We’ve got to keep all our hands on the mixing board, just like at Ivo’s.”
The Jovi sits on his chopper and says, “Yeah, dude. A real producer would be ideal, but it’s not like this is going to be our only album. If it means we could be on the road in September, that would be totally worth it.”
Kurt lifts his head, holds his hands out wide, and says, “We control the album and it’s going to be good. I’ve heard Felder play guitar—musically he doesn’t know dick. I’ve never heard of this Kostas guy. Felder knew enough to sign us so he must know something.”
Spewing and Eric sit obediently. Lunky wipes off the Jovi’s chopper with a white rag.
“I can’t believe DCA would go along with this,” the Jovi says. “They got a lot of coin invested in this band—you’d think they’d want a surefire hitmaker on the board.”
“I guess Felder’s got Bernie in his back pocket,” EJ says.
Broad five-way intersections, liquor stores with neon signs behind yellowed plastic windows, the remnants of railroad tracks, and smog like a yellow film—it’s early summer in L.A., not really summer at all. Every day is warm at some point, cool in the evening, leather-jacket weather at night. The coast is gray all day. The San Fernando Valley is endless, utilitarian, work happening in alleys and lots and warehouses. Cars are repaired, painted, filled with fluid. Tortillas are rolled flat and round, heated, then covered with beans and rolled into cylinders. Stage lights are fastened to racks, plugged in, and switched on to illuminate glory. Clouds blow in from the beach and are stretched thin over the mountains, evaporating into wisps in the warm air.
Each day Thunderstick plays music and grinds a late lunch. Each night Thunderstick goes to clubs, then heads back out to Gates’s for another jam session or they make their way to a coffee shop for a late-night breakfast.
At the International House of Pancakes on Sunset at 3 A.M. on a Wednesday, the band notices Neil Young sitting in a booth across the room. “Hey, Felder, isn’t that Neil Young over there?” the Jovi asks.
Felder cranes his neck. “Yup.” He is out of his seat and over with Neil, waving for the band to come join him. Neil is scruffy. Everyone in the band shakes his hand.
“Hey, man, you want to jam with us?” Kurt asks.
“Yeah. When?”
“How’s about now.”
“Yeah. Now is cool.”
Neil drives a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. The car is cranberry red with a silver undercarriage from the door to the tail.
“This car is the tits!” Spewing yells in the parking lot at Gates, and tries to shake Neil’s hand.
Felder laughs.
Neil borrows Kurt’s Tele and plugs in. The jam starts. The blues. Spewing tries over and over to hand Neil a pick. Neil shakes his head no. To get him to leave Neil alone, Kurt kicks Spewing in the ass. Neil laughs. The first song lasts a little under an hour.
The second hour starts with “Vicious” by Lou Reed.
The Jovi starts in on “Cinnamon Girl.” Neil does his strange hop up to the mic and sings. Neil plays a sick, one-note guitar solo—it’s all tone and attitude. The song ends in a droning descent and stays there in a tribal guitar war until a riff takes over. The riff is “Gloria.” Neil is doing his strange hop. Spewing is again trying to hand Neil a pick. Eric finds the key. EJ beats the hell out of his dear friends. The Jovi rocks back and forth with Neil. Kurt sings. The song ends in triumphant, melodic chaos. Everyone knows there’s nowhere to go from there. Neil drops his borrowed guitar on the ground and kicks the strings rhythmically. One final umph and it’s over.
Neil looks at the band and grabs the mic and says, “Don’t let the hospital change you.” Then he turns and walks out the door.
“Bros. We’ve fucking made it,” Spewing declares.
“This is just the beginning,” says the Jovi.
“I’m bringing the truck and Kostas out here tomorrow!” Felder says, and pushes his frizzy black hair back with two hands. “We’ve got to record this thing you’re doing in here, this live thing. We’ve got to.”
Felder can make it happen, so it does. A mobile studio sound truck backs into the parking lot between the choppers and Kurt’s Fastback and Felder’s Porsche. The back door opens and the awe-struck band members climb inside. Kurt finds a mixing board. EJ finds a twenty-four-track tape deck. The Jovi finds a closed-circuit TV. Spewing finds a half-empty Budweiser, and Eric finds a backstage pass to a Whitesnake concert. Three techies in black T-shirts jump out of the front of the truck and go to work. Suddenly there are thick wires running from the blackened den to the truck. EJ lifts the thic
k cable and points at Spewing. “You know what this means, Spewing?”
“It means us bros are gonna be famous, bro.”
“No, it means that it matters. Fuck up, slide into a note, back of the pocket, front of the pocket, it all matters now. You hear me?”
The band turns when they hear the mild sound of a factory Harley, a small one, girl-size, a Sportster. There’s a compact little fellow with curly black hair riding it. His little bare arms extend to the handlebars from his leather vest. He wears a string necklace with a shark’s tooth in the middle.
“What is that?” Kurt asks.
“Put some Jordache jeans on him and he looks like one of the dudes in The Warriors,” Eric says.
“It’s Kostas. Your producer. Come. I’ll introduce you.”
Kostas has black eyes that devour light. After the introductions, Kurt says, “Have you heard the demos?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?” EJ asks.
“You really want to know?”
“Of course.” The band nods in unison.
“I like the band, but the demos are wet as shit.”
“Then why are you here?” Kurt asks and points his finger.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…,” Felder interjects.
“Look, I don’t mean the performances are bad, or the songs, I just mean the sound quality.”
“All of our friends, all of our fans love those demos. That’s our sound. That’s what we’re supposed to sound like,” Kurt says.
“Kurt, the digital delay, the reverb, it sounds a little too British on the demos,” Felder says.
“I can make you sound better and more American,” Kostas says.
“The only band from the last five years that I have any respect for is Echo & the Bunnymen.”
“Kurt, those guys have never sold well.”
Kurt eyes Felder, then Kostas, then Felder again. “The two of you, who don’t play music…” Kurt cuffs himself. “You guys are producing our album?”
“Kurt. C’mon, Kurt,” Felder pleads. “Kostas used to do rough mixes for the Stones.”
“So?”
“Ron and Keith always liked them better.” Felder smiles as if it were secret sacred knowledge.
“What about Mick?” the Jovi asks.
“Kurt, you got so much talent and so many songs. Kostas has talent too. It’s gonna be perfect. We’re just here to make it happen, get it all down on tape, you guys are gonna make the album. Just play one song and come back in here and listen to the playback with a Kostas mix and you’re going to flip out.”
Kurt presses his forefingers into his temples. “Okay. I’ll try it.”
Kurt struts into the black den, plugs in, rips out the first chord to “My Minister.” Kostas dives into the truck and hits the record button, maniacally fiddling with the knobs. Kurt’s guitar is chunky and vicious. The band joins in.
The song ends with a long sustain.
Kurt walks out to the truck. Kostas hits playback.
“Okay,” Kurt says.
The next day Priscilla drives up from San Diego. Kurt shows her his Mustang and takes her to the 7-Eleven to buy her some things. The clerk calls in his check, then turns to Kurt with a frown. “The bank says insufficient funds.”
“It’s okay, Kurt. It’s totally cute, but I didn’t really need this Care Bear.”
“This isn’t a problem.” Kurt holds up his Gold Card.
The clerk shakes his head. “We don’t take those.”
Kurt walks up to a pay phone, pulls a card out of his pocket, and dials the number.
“Hey, Mr. Wellington, I need some more money. I need to buy my wife a car.”
“Okay, Kurt, I need two band members to make a transfer.”
Wellington calls the Jovi at the Cokewoods and asks, “Is it okay if we transfer another ten grand from the group account to the personal accounts? For Kurt?”
“Whatever.”
Kurt answers the payphone at the 7-Eleven and nods. He tells Priscilla, “Forget that stuff in there. Let’s go get you a new car.”
Her big sad eyes get happy. “Really?”
Priscilla spots a white VW Cabriolet in a used-car lot off Lankershim. They put five grand down and sign a loan for the rest. Kurt says, “Quit your job at Macy’s. I don’t want you to ever have to work again.” They show up at Gates in Priscilla’s new car, Kurt decked out in black leather inside the white-on-white car.
“Dude,” Eric says to Spewing. “He looks like James Dean in heaven.”
“No. He looks like a blackhead.”
“Hey! Hey!” Jesse the Giant calls out. “Looks like someone went shopping.”
Kurt has a cigarette hanging from his lips. “Drives pretty good,” he says to Kostas, gritting his teeth to hold the cigarette. “You want to try it?”
“Let me drive that thing,” Jesse yells.
“YOU BOUGHT ANOTHER CAR?” EJ yells as he walks outside. “DID YOU TRANSFER MORE MONEY?”
“Cool down, Elmer, we’re gonna make so much money none of this is going to matter.”
“Kurt, you don’t understand!”
“Yeah, I do.”
“We need a band meeting. Just the band.”
“She’s my wife. She can stay.”
“I’ll sit outside,” Priscilla says.
The band assembles in the black den. EJ lectures the other members. “We can’t take more money from the band account! Kurt, you don’t understand money. I understand money. It’s that simple. You guys need to listen to me. Kurt thinks we’re going to be rich forever just on the advance. We’re not. It’s for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now you need to remember that Felder took seventy grand right off the top, which is unethical, but never mind that for right now—that leaves us one hundred and eighty grand at our accountant’s, with another hundred grand on its way from our T-shirt deal. If you do the math, you’ll realize that Felder took his chunk of the T-shirt money before it ever came to us. As I said—unethical. But listen to me, after Felder bit off his seventy grand, our lawyers took their thirty. I called them to go over the bill. It’s a little trick I learned. Whenever you get your—”
“What the fuck does this have to do with anything?” Kurt yells.
“Listen to me. I never forget anything of a financial nature.”
“Why are you so fucking wound up on this? It’s cool. We’re just spending the interest.”
“Kurt, interest, even if it was at ten percent, would only amount to eighteen grand a year, or thirty-six hundred a year per guy, or three hundred dollars a month per guy. And that’s if we still had the whole chunk of money. We don’t. We’re down to less than a hundred grand!”
“It’s not going to matter. We’re going to make so much money that none of this is going to matter. You’re just the drummer. Get behind your fucking drumset and play a fucking song!”
EJ utters a primal scream, shakes his head, kicks over a road case, walks behind his set, and takes it out on his snare drum. The blows are so sharp that they make everyone blink in synchronicity. EJ expands the violence into an absurd drumbeat. Spewing grabs his bass, comes in locked and pumping. The Jovi chunks out thick distortions of time and space. Eric makes a chainsaw-sounding synth pad. Kurt grabs the mic, sings, yells, flops around on the stage like a bluefin tuna on a fishing boat. Coming into the final break, Spewing plays the tag a line too early. Kurt hops up, grabs Spewing by the collar, and throws him off the stage. The song ends with the crash.
Kostas runs in yelling. “What the fuck is wrong with you guys! That was the one! Never stop a song! I can fix that shit! I had the whole thing! That was going on the album! What the fuck?”
Wellington walks in behind Kostas and says, “No problem, Elmer. From now on, we’ll require three band members for a transfer.”
Felder walks in behind Wellington, pushes his hair behind his ear, and yells, “Hey EJ, something else, don’t you ever call me unethical. You don’t know unethical. You don’t want
me to show you unethical.”
“You were listening in the truck?”
“Always.”
For James Franklin every day is Christmas. His mouth almost hurts from smiling so much. He delivers his last burrito. It has the flag of Mexico flying triumphantly in an orange wedge by its side. He tells his boss, “I’ve been bringing the chicken fajita burrito to tables for six years, and that’s the last one.” They all stand and look at it, Hans the manager, Suze the bartender, Hector the bus boy. Sophie walks in, James turns to the mariachis and says, “Hit it boys!” They start to play “Cuando Calienta El Sol.” If he only could leap into her arms and be carried away it would be the end of the movie. But instead James kisses Sophie on the lips while the Mariachis sing: When the sun is hot here on the beach/I feel your body tremble close to me…
James, forever fighting it out just to survive, gives himself to Sophie completely. She doesn’t want to be alone. He doesn’t want to be away from her. He slides into her life with ease. They move into an apartment on the water at Windansea. It’s first class to London, first class to Paris. He’s quick with a joke and knows about Andy Warhol’s Factory, and a surfer? A real surfer? How intriguing they all say.
While she does her thing, he walks the streets, takes in the sights, smells the flowers, throws francs in fountains, questions the Mona Lisa, sketches the Venus de Milo, has a perfect croissant explode in his face and sips a café creme. And most importantly, he’s there at night, when the whole crew, the photographer, the client, when everybody assembles at a long white table, and the feast begins, and the wine pours. “We don’t drink,” he says when the waiter gets close.
“Just un peu.” The waiter says.
“No, un peu Merci.” James says as Sophie’s eyes follow each drop of red that fills the client’s glass.
They grew up with the castaways. They know them from the tube. And before that, they knew them from the Jungian collective subconscious. The Skipper is the boot of authority, the brute force of it. The Skipper has appeared in many guises: the Roman centurion, the police officer, the crossing guard, the bouncer, the meter maid, the drummer. The Skipper does not question the code. He enforces it.
Before the Flock Page 12
