“CHILDREN, CHILDREN!” Miles screamed. “DON’T MAKE ME STOP THIS CAR!”
Derek and Riley settled down and glared at each other, exactly like feuding siblings.
“I’ll answer this one,” Ryan said. “You got your recorder turned on?”
I pressed the button twice and got the solid red light. “Okay.”
8
“So, the summer after you… met us,” Ryan said, hesitating the tiniest bit, “we found a local drummer and guitarist. They weren’t very good – nobody good wanted to play with us. They all wanted to play with the more established bands in Athens, and we were pretty young. So we settled. But the guitarist and drummer we got were good enough. I started going to UGA in August, and in September we started booking frat party gigs.”
“A thousand a show,” Derek laughed. “Remember when I was over the moon when we used to get 250 each?”
Actually, the way my finances were at the moment, 250 dollars for one night’s work sounded pretty damn good… even if I was staying in a luxury hotel doing an interview for Rolling Stone.
“Except we didn’t make that our first couple of shows,” Ryan told me. “In fact, we had to bribe somebody to let us play our first gig.”
“Two kegs of beer,” Derek remembered.
“They paid you in beer?” I asked.
“No, we had to pay THEM to play. Two kegs of beer in exchange for letting us do three songs. They let us play before the opening act for the main band, if we paid them two kegs of beer,” Ryan clarified.
“What’d we play?” Derek asked, trying to remember. “‘Paradise City’ – ”
“‘Give It Away Now’ by the Chili Peppers,” Ryan continued.
“And ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” Riley finished up.
I looked at her in surprise. “Were you with them at that point?”
“No, but I’ve heard this fuckin’ story a million times.”
“How’d you get the beer?” I asked Ryan. “I’m assuming your parents wouldn’t buy it for you.”
“Ohhhhhhh no,” he laughed. “No, no, no.”
“I knew somebody,” Derek explained.
“He fucked some sorority chick who was over 21,” Riley crowed, “and she bought it for ‘em.”
Ew.
I actually hadn’t needed to hear that.
“Thanks,” Derek said sarcastically. I could tell he was actually pissed at her now.
“Awwww, does Blondie not know how many bitches you bang after the shows?” Riley clucked in fake sympathy. “Am I ruining your chances of gettin’ in her pants?”
EWWWWW.
Derek immediately kicked her again, which led to another flurry of kung fu kicks across the aisle.
“CHILDREN!” Miles screamed, and they stopped.
“Anyway, we had to pay to play,” Ryan said.
“But we blew the other bands AWAY,” Derek chuckled. “We had, like, two offers for other gigs as soon as we walked off stage.”
“So we started playing regular gigs after that – at least one a weekend, usually two, sometimes even three.”
“We were rollin’ in the money,” Derek laughed.
“Did you move out of that horrible house?” I asked.
“Nooooo… that house had character,” he said, as though offended I would even suggest otherwise.
“But we eventually traded up guitarists and drummers,” Ryan said. “Only problem was, as a cover band we couldn’t get any gigs opening for other bands at the 40 Watt or the Georgia Theater… and we couldn’t play any of our own stuff at the frat parties. They only wanted to hear ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’”
“But your songs are really good,” I said.
“Our early stuff was okay,” Derek said unenthusiastically.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, “but our guitarists and drummers weren’t. No real chops, no real contribution to the song writing, basically just wanted to get drunk and get laid. We knew that if we wanted people to take us seriously, we were going to have to get serious.”
“So I fired all of them and we called Killian,” Derek said.
“Just like that?”
“Well, actually we emailed him,” Ryan admitted. “And sent him some digital recordings of our covers, plus some original stuff.”
I looked at Killian at the other end of the limo. “And you just picked up and moved across the Atlantic?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t really have anything going on at the time.”
“What about that band you were in? God – Gob – ”
“Gobsmacked? Uhh,” he groaned slightly. “Biggest bunch of wankers I’ve ever had the misfortune of playing with.”
“Besides us,” Riley teased him.
“Besides you in particular, yes,” Killian smiled.
“So… you were just sitting around in your apartment, doing nothing – ”
“Nooo – he’s too modest to tell you,” Ryan said, “but he was doing tons of session work in London at the time.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Session work is where the individual members of a band aren’t good enough to nail a part on an album, so the producer hires really good outside guys to play their parts just for that recording session,” Ryan explained. “Killian was doing tons of session work after Gobsmacked broke up – but as soon as he heard the recordings I sent him, he came on over.”
“You remembered them?” I asked Killian.
The guitarist smiled and took a drag on his joint. “Oh yes. Derek made quite the impression.”
He tends to do that.
“I guess nobody else ever came up to you and said, ‘I’m going to start a band and I want you to join it.’”
“Yes. He was quite ballsy, even then.”
“That’s what I want on my tombstone,” Derek said. He motioned in the air like he was laying out the words as he spoke in a British accent: “He was quite ballsy.”
Killian laughed.
“Soooo… what about Riley?”
“Well, Killian moved in with Derek – ”
I looked over at Killian in shock. “In that house? You’re kidding me.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Derek snapped.
“It was terrible,” Ryan laughed.
“It was a place to stay,” Killian said diplomatically.
“You don’t… still live there, do you?” I asked.
“Fuck no,” Riley said. “They were crampin’ my style.”
Ryan smiled. “We bought separate houses – much nicer houses – a while back. Anyway, we started looking for drummers, but there weren’t really any great ones around Athens or Atlanta. Anybody really good was already in a bigger band.”
“I said we should go to New York and have a look around there,” Killian said.
“So we road-tripped up to New York City. We stayed in this horrible flea-bag hotel – ”
“It was fine,” Killian said mildly.
“You had a bed all to yourself. I had to sleep next to him,” Ryan complained as he pointed at Derek.
“Woooo! Didja tap that ass, Ryan?” Riley hooted.
“We don’t kiss and tell,” Derek said, in a voice that suggested he was keeping a secret.
“No I did not,” Ryan said emphatically.
“Didja tap Ryan’s ass, D?”
“Wellllll – ”
“NO,” Ryan said. “Shut up, both of you. Anyway, Killian had played a lot of shows with some American bands during Gobsmacked’s tour, and he couldn’t stop talking about this one crazy chick in a punk rock band.”
Killian leaned forward. “What was the name of that group again, luv?”
“Pussy Killz,” Riley said matter-of-factly. “With a ‘z.’”
Figures.
“So we go to see… um, that band on Friday night, and she gets up on stage,” Ryan said, jerking his thumb at Riley. “And she just blew us away.”
“The rest of the band kind of sucked, but she was awesome,” Derek agreed. “We figured we’d play
her some stuff we’d rerecorded with Killian – songs that were ten times better than what we’d used to get him onboard, and a hundred times better than anything her band could do. Then she’d say ‘okay’ and we’d get our drummer. Easy.”
“So we write her a note and send it backstage, and ask if we can buy her a drink afterwards,” Killian said, “and explain our proposition. It was a perfectly lovely note. And she writes back over the original text in big red letters, Fuck off. That’s her answer.”
I looked at Riley. She shrugged.
“I saw ‘em from up on stage. I thought they were fuckin’ weirdos. Nobody at our shows ever looked like them.”
“Yeah, it was an unusually large crowd of bull dykes,” Derek said.
“And every one of ‘em had a bigger dick than you,” Riley jeered.
Derek just laughed at her.
Killian blew out a mouthful of smoke. “So Derek, being Derek, goes and asks the bartender what the drummer of Pussy Killz likes to drink. Then he buys a fifth of whiskey off him and proceeds to bully his way backstage.”
“The whole band was in there, sitting around the table in this shitty dressing room, and I went in there and slammed the Jack down and said, ‘We want you in our band,’” Derek said.
“Just like with Killian,” I recalled.
“Yeah, except – ”
“I told ‘em to fuck off again,” Riley grinned. “But I drank their booze.”
“We tried to talk to her, but she just kept telling us to fuck off,” Derek laughed. “It was like, ‘Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuuuuck off. FUCK off. FUCK OFF. Fuck… off.’ Two dozen different ways to say ‘fuck off.’”
“Literally?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Derek nodded. “I’d say, ‘We heard you play.’ She’d nod and say, ‘Fuck off.’ ‘We think you’re really good – ’ ‘Yeah? Fuck off.’ ‘We’ve got a really unusual sound – can we let you hear some of our songs?’ ‘Um – FUCK OFF.’ It was the first time in my life I ever wanted to punch a chick.”
“You woulda drawn back a bloody stump, asshole,” Riley smirked.
“Anyway, I left her a CD we’d burned, and we just walked out, figuring that was that,” Ryan said.
“And I stole the Jack Daniels bottle back and told her to go drink on somebody else’s dime,” Derek said.
“Yeah, I was pissed about that,” Riley laughed.
Derek pointed at her. “But that was what made you listen to the CD.”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Hardly.”
“Anyway, so we go to a bunch of other shows and talk to some other drummers, but none of them are interested in moving down to Athens,” Ryan continued. “We go back home five days later, all depressed – ”
“And who walks out of my house when we finally drive up but this bitch right here,” Derek said, pointing at Riley.
I stared at her. “You were in his house?”
She frowned defensively. “I needed someplace to stay.”
“We weren’t even home yet,” Derek laughed.
“His roommates just let you stay there?”
Riley waved her hand like Pff. “One dude was so stoned out of his mind, he thought I was his roommate already… and the drag queen was cool. I just told ‘em Derek was expecting me. They didn’t give a shit.”
“Except Derek wasn’t expecting you, though, right?” I asked.
“His roommates didn’t know that.”
“How’d you find out where he lived?”
“I went to the clubs and said there was this buff musclehead and a tall geek and an English pothead, and everybody knew who I was talking about immediately. One of the bartenders told me where Derek lived, and I just drove around till I found it.”
“Tell her what you said when you opened the door and saw us,” Derek said.
“‘Saddle up, bitches – I came to play!’” she hollered gleefully.
“No, before that.”
“Oh, yeah – ‘What took you so long?’”
“Why’d you change your mind and leave New York?” I asked.
“You ever been in a band with three other chicks, Blondie?”
“No.”
“So I guess you’ve never been in a band with three other chicks you’ve fucked, then.”
“That would definitely be ‘no.’”
“Well, I can let you in on a little secret: it’s too much fuckin’ drama.” Riley gestured to her bandmates. “As soon as these fuckers left, Sibyl – she was the lead singer – started screaming at me, telling me I wouldn’t dare quit the band, I was a traitor, I was fuckin’ guys behind her back, yadda yadda yadda. I wasn’t even seriously considering listening to the CD until she went off – then I was like, ‘Oh yeah? FUCK YOU, BITCH.’ And then I listened to the CD, and, well…”
“She liked us,” Killian said.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But you didn’t suck too bad,” Riley teased him.
“And you just picked up and left?”
“Yup. Said, ‘Fuck all y’all bitches, I’m OUT,’ and drove my van down… and the rest is history.”
“And you guys went on to record your first album,” I marveled.
“Oh, oh – wait – Ryan hasn’t told you the part where he almost pussied out,” Riley said excitedly.
“I didn’t… wimp out,” Ryan said.
“You just pussied out right there, you big pussy,” Riley snorted.
“Ryan was getting a lot of flack from his parents,” Derek explained. “He wanted to be a music major, and they wanted him to be a business major. They were even pressuring him to quit the band – ”
“And he almost fuckin’ did!” Riley shouted in disbelief.
“No I didn’t,” Ryan said, shaking his head and giving me a look like Don’t listen to them.
“Yes he did,” Riley said, pushing his head up against the window of the limo and getting up in my face. “The drag queen was moving out and we wanted Ryan to move in so we could work on the album, and he was all like Uhhhh and Waaaah – ” she said, imitating a baby’s cries.
“I was not!” Ryan said indignantly as he pried Riley’s nicotine-stained fingers off his face.
“So I was like, ‘Bitch – this is decision time here,’” Riley said dramatically. “‘There ain’t no Plan B. I came all the way down here from New York, and Killian flew all the way over from England. We believe in this band – do you believe in this band? Because you’re either all the way in, or you’re all the way out. And you had better not pussy out on me now.’”
I looked at Ryan. “What did you do?”
“He did me proud!” Riley shouted happily, leapt up, and gave Ryan a noogie. He laughed and tried to bat her off, but she was like a monkey with an extremely strong grip.
It struck me that they acted very much like brother and sister. A playful, bantering relationship. With Derek it was brotherly, too, but more like sibling rivalry: constant, simmering hostility. Between her and Ryan there was real warmth. She could have been his long-lost little sister.
His ill-kempt, foul-mouthed, horny lesbian little sister.
“I moved in that day and quit college next week,” Ryan said, after putting his hand on Riley’s forehead and keeping her at arm’s length. “And then we recorded the first album, and that was basically when we took off.”
Just as he said it, the limo pulled into a giant parking lot in front of a huge stadium.
“Touching story, ladies and gentlemen, but it will have to be resumed at a later time,” Miles announced. “We are here, and you are now officially on the clock. Go on, get out! Chop chop!”
9
The Staples Center was a massive arena usually reserved for sports events and the biggest of the big music acts. It has room for 20,000 people; at the moment, there were only 100, and so it felt cavernously empty.
The hundred in question were working getting the stage, lighting, and equipment ready for the show. There were teams futzing with the electronics, and others me
ssing with the sound system. Feedback whined through the speakers and echoed in the empty spaces above the upper rafters.
“Christ, never on time, never on schedule,” Miles spat, pronouncing ‘schedule’ as ‘shed-yull.’ Then he stomped down to the stage and started yelling at some long-haired sound guys.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We go eat,” Derek said, and led the way.
We walked up onstage and passed through a bunch of scaffolding. Derek called out to and joked with almost everyone we passed. Ryan and Killian got a lot of enthusiastic hellos; Riley got a few shout-outs, but mostly everybody seemed scared of her.
We entered a cement hallway and turned left into a giant room filled with tables of food: bite-sized morsels of filet mignon, shrimp on skewers, all sorts of hors d’oeuvres, and a platter of Big Macs. Riley headed over and immediately started in on the hamburgers.
There was a guy already loading up a plate. He had on a sleeveless leather jacket, the better to show off the menagerie of tattoos curling across his arms. He was more of a stereotypical rocker: thin, slight build, wild hair.
“Hey, what’s up, guys,” he said, throwing the band a head nod.
Derek went over and clapped him on the back. They started chatting.
“Who’s that?” I asked Ryan.
“That’s Mike, our backup guitarist.”
I frowned. “What? There’s only four of you in the band.”
“On tour we have another guitarist. On the albums, Killian does all the guitar parts himself – except for bass, of course. But on tour, we need another guy for rhythm guitar. He’s cool, I’ll introduce you. Hey, Mike – I want you to meet somebody.”
We said our hellos. Ryan told him I was there from Rolling Stone.
“Whoa – you finally caved, huh?” Mike asked Derek.
Derek just shrugged.
“Not exactly,” Riley shouted from the food table, half a Big Mac crammed in her mouth. “He’s tryin’a bang her.”
Mike laughed as Derek and I scowled at Riley.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” Mike said to me. “Riley’s a little shy, but she’ll eventually come out of her shell.”
Rock All Night (The Rock Star's Seduction #2) Page 4
