The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  “‘Never Say Never,’” Ethan said without looking at either of them. “We killed that tonight. Start with what we know.”

  Sydney answered by winding through the opening riff, which hadn’t changed from the first time Ethan had heard it in his parents’ living room, the same night Ethan had proposed they all move in together. That now seemed like an eternity ago. Gus followed Sydney’s lead. They were into it. Raj nodded to the beat, moving slides on the long multitrack console in front of him. Ethan half expected Raj to stop them to get a count in when Raj was ready, but he didn’t. Ethan soon saw that Raj loved the spontaneity of live performance as much as he did and wanted to capture it. Some of their best stuff was off the cuff, when things weren’t all set up. They could always go back and adjust things later, but it was nearly impossible to duplicate a moment of magic. That was what recording was about to Raj.

  Ethan could see Sydney’s tiredness. Her face was flush with color high in her cheeks, but her fingers didn’t seem to notice. She was a spectacle to watch. The two had played almost the whole song when Gus threw in a new bass riff that lit up Sydney’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Awesome, guys!” Raj shouted over the intercom after they’d finished, giving them a thumbs up. “Sorry, miss, but I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Works for me!” Sydney shouted back, looking at Ethan.

  “She’s one of the guys,” Ethan said.

  Ethan smiled at Raj’s politeness and was sure they’d see another side of Mr. Mahar in time. He figured Raj’s high recommendation had come with a few frayed nerves and hurt feelings.

  For the next hour, Gus and Sydney played on. Gus broke his D-string near the end of “Don’t Tell Me.” Raj raised his hands, signaling them to keep playing. “That was cool,” he said. “We’ll use it.”

  “The Angel” caused them the most grief. Raj told Ethan to squeeze in with Sydney and Gus and sing.

  “It doesn’t work,” Raj said when they’d finished.

  Ethan returned to the sound booth. He could see Raj’s fists clenched on the board.

  “Something’s not right. It’s beautiful but not like this.” Raj shook his head. His long, straight black hair shimmered in the overhead fluorescents.

  Ethan looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock.

  “It needs piano,” Raj said suddenly. “Maybe some strings.”

  Ethan saw Raj had one focus: to make a great song. Good wasn’t enough.

  Greg squeezed into the booth with them, a can of Mountain Dew in his hand.

  “How’s it goin’?” Greg asked.

  “Damn fine,” Raj replied. “Ready to play some drums?”

  “Yep,” Greg said, and sipped his soda. “Replaced the skin. Spent an hour tuning the fucker, but we’re good now.”

  Greg had taken the snare somewhere else to fix it.

  “Let’s do it,” Raj said. “Drums were a pain on my last project. I must think good thoughts.”

  Greg looked at Ethan. Ethan smiled and shrugged.

  “Big kit. Squeeze in, and we’ll see. Sound’ll bounce less. Gotta hear it. Cross that bridge,” Raj said, speaking fast, and then he stood up. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Greg went into the room, where Gus was unstrapping his bass. Sydney joined Ethan beside Raj. Ethan was always amazed at how tiny she was offstage. A couple of barrettes held her hair in place at different angles, giving her an edgy Laurie Anderson look. The fingers of her left hand were moving as if she were running through another riff in her head. If he asked, Ethan knew she’d shake her head and say something like “What goes in must come out.”

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Sydney said, interrupting Ethan’s thoughts about her. Her love for music did not include the drums, and Greg was not on her favorite-people list, which didn’t help.

  “I wanna hear Greg for a minute,” Ethan replied.

  “Suit yourself. I’m going for a smoke.”

  Greg slid in behind his constantly expanding drum kit. Ethan had difficulty seeing it as just drums and had begun to refer to it as the Kit. Greg had to crawl under two cymbals to get to his stool.

  Raj moved a couple of slides and stuck a piece of masking tape at the bottom of each slide. He wrote a number on the tape to indicate which mike the slide controlled.

  Greg struck the snare with his drumstick. “That’s fucking unreal!” he yelled.

  Ethan smiled; when the snare was good, Greg was good.

  Raj nodded, acknowledging the comment, but his thoughts seemed elsewhere. He appeared to stare out a side window that wasn’t there. Ethan hadn’t stayed to hear Greg drum. He was concerned about Greg clashing with Raj. It was like watching clouds darken before a storm. Greg disliked change more than most. Ethan wanted their first recording session to go well. The Release was unknown, unsigned, and unrecorded, and no matter what Randolph had said to those backing him, there would be little tolerance for personality conflicts and delays. They couldn’t screw up this opportunity.

  Raj watched through the glass as Greg made his never-ending adjustments.

  “All right!” Raj yelled over Greg’s pops on the snare. “I’ll run ‘Never Say Never’ to your ears.”

  “What?” Greg called back.

  Raj didn’t repeat himself. He shook his head.

  Ethan could feel the tension growing.

  “Yer da boss,” Greg replied in some kind of mixed accent, seemingly to intentionally antagonize the man at the controls.

  An instant later, Sydney’s blistering riff filled the room. Gus’s pounding bass line followed. Greg started and then stopped.

  “Stop. Stop. Fucking stop!” he shouted, but the music kept playing. “Start it again!” he yelled, raising his sticks in the air.

  “Just play!” Raj shouted back, but Greg didn’t start and shook his sticks at Raj behind the glass. Raj punched the board. The music stopped.

  Greg was more structured and process oriented than all of them put together. Sydney liked to say he was a robot. He could follow instructions like nobody’s business but was devoid of passion. Playing drums was a process for Greg. He saw himself as an elaborate metronome. Playing was more science than art. He had a point, as his job was to keep the band in sync. It drove Sydney nuts. “Drummers are a different breed,” she’d say, “and Greg’s fucking special to the breed.” But love them or hate them, bands didn’t exist without drummers.

  “I need a count in, dude!” Greg said loudly, defiant in his caffeine-and-whatever-else-induced exhaustion.

  Ethan believed that Greg, out of spite, would have stopped again if Raj hadn’t given him one.

  Ethan again saw that Raj was all music; nothing else mattered. He had no patience for bullshit and whining. As if by magic, Greg drummed “Never Say Never” like Ethan had never heard before. He watched, waiting for the mishit, but it never came. He didn’t notice Sydney and Gus squeeze in behind him.

  When Greg finished, he stopped, clenched his sticks together in one hand, and bent down to adjust something. The action seemed like his subconscious acknowledgment of playing well. When he returned to his upright position on his stool, he flipped his hair to the side. Raj was standing with his thumbs-up approval.

  “Wow!” Raj cried. “Right on.”

  Greg, smiling, placed his sticks on his snare. He roughed up his hair with both hands as if he were washing it and then raked it back between his fingers, one hand following the other. It was another ritual Ethan had witnessed time and again over the years. He knew when Greg was pleased with himself.

  “We’ve a couple hours left,” Raj said, and he sat back down. “Here’s what we’ll do.”

  He explained his plan for the next three hours. He wanted to use the electric piano and find Sydney a twelve-string Fender. The Music Place down the street would be open and likely have one.

  When Raj fin
ished, Sydney left to chase down the guitar. Gus went for a round of coffees.

  Raj wanted Ethan to sing “The Angel” to the piano, but Greg was to drum out “You Don’t Know What You’re Saying” first, and he did so flawlessly. Greg smiled when Raj stood up and pressed his thumb to the glass separating them.

  It was Ethan’s turn.

  CHAPTER 25

  Monday, November 26, 1984

  Ethan was anxious.

  While Sydney was gone, finding the twelve-string guitar, Ethan fingered out a new version of “The Angel” on the upright piano in the lounge area. It took him half an hour to get the mix of chords and arpeggios he could sing to. Raj was right. It did sound better on the piano. In a matter of hours, Raj had become like a fifth member of the band. Big-boned and chubby, he was unlike many of the skin-and-bone music types Ethan had come across in his short time immersed in the Toronto music scene. Like the rest of them, he said what was on his mind. His direct outbursts kept them on their toes. The recording session was already like an extension of life at the house, edgy and uncertain but productive.

  Greg crawled out of his kit and said he needed a cigarette. Ethan sat down at the Yamaha electric and played. Sydney walked in just as he finished, carrying a guitar case that looked big enough for her to climb into to go to sleep.

  “I fell in love with a Martin,” Sydney said, setting the case down on the floor. She undid the latches quickly.

  “Martin! I said Fender!” Raj said, his sharp tone piercing the quiet studio like shots from a pistol. Ethan’s hunch regarding Raj’s other side was evident in his reaction to Sydney not following his request.

  “I know, but the Martin felt better,” Sydney replied, Raj’s terseness having no effect on her.

  “Get the Fender!” Raj said, speaking even louder.

  “Fuck you!” Sydney said, on the attack and not about to retreat.

  “I want the Fender.”

  “You want the Fender? Get the fucker yourself.”

  Exhausted, Sydney was mad, and Ethan knew it. She had the guitar strapped on and was already strumming through the chords of “The Angel” as if no one else were there. Her eyes were closed.

  Raj threw up his arms. “Let’s go,” he said, shaking his head, appearing to realize he should choose his battles.

  Ethan sat down at the keyboard and played a few chords. Sydney stopped and looked at him.

  “I changed it a bit,” he said.

  He liked the opening and repeated it twice before starting to sing:

  Here lies an angel

  with broken wings.

  Her eyes still watch;

  her voice still sings.

  The words fit better with the notes he played, as they often did when he wasn’t trying to fit them to some kind of structure. A smile stretched the width of his face as he looked at Sydney. She started to strum to the melody he was playing. Incredibly, the two instruments were in tune and sounded beautiful together.

  “Okay, okay,” Raj said, “we gotta get this on tape. That’s close! My bad.”

  He ducked out of the room and back into the booth to hunch over the mixing console.

  Raj’s thumb went up behind the glass. Ethan started, already more comfortable with the song. He repeated the opening two bars as he had before, readying to sing, feeling the words. But something changed. The heavy padlocked door was back. It scared him, yet he refused to stop playing. His eyes closed as they did when he was trying to focus on something he couldn’t quite hold on to. The words left him. What came out was different from what he’d written in his parents’ living room:

  It’s there; I can touch it,

  But it’s not mine to have.

  He didn’t get to the next line. It didn’t sound right. He stopped.

  Raj was quick on the intercom. “It’s okay. Start over.”

  Sydney was sitting on the stool beside him, her slim black-denim-clad left leg stretched out in front of her. The Martin rested on her right thigh; her foot was elevated on the stool’s footrest. Her hands were on top of the twelve-string body; her chin rested on her hands. She was frowning. Her eyes were closed. Ethan knew her look: pathos.

  But in looking at Sydney, he saw Mila. Mila was not there, though his heart said differently, breaking all over again. He felt love he’d thought was dormant—love that would never touch the one for whom it was intended. The performer and creator were unable to enjoy the beauty of their work as others would. His fingers would never touch her softness again; his ears would never hear her sweet voice.

  Ethan, start again, she said in his mind.

  He watched her speak. They would have been only words to anyone else, yet he craved to hear but a whisper.

  “Ethan,” Sydney said, her eyes wide like those of a person questioning whether another was listening.

  Ethan blinked.

  “Start again. We don’t have all day,” she said.

  “From the top, man,” Raj said over the intercom.

  Ethan looked at the piano keys as if they’d suddenly appeared before him. His fingers played the first chord. The sound seemed to touch him as she might have. He hoped it might touch Mila.

  He raised his head and looked at the ceiling. His fingers moved across the keys in familiar territory again. They seemed to know where to go on their own. The melody came and then the words:

  Here lies an angel

  with broken wings.

  Her eyes are watching as he sings.

  It will never really end.

  “Fuck!” Sydney said.

  Ethan kept playing, trying to match his voice to the piano, rushing the words to bring the song around.

  “Okay, okay!” Raj came on the intercom. “This needs work. Ethan, let the vocals go. We don’t need them right now. Just play. Time’s almost up.”

  Ethan stood up and then sat down again. He was in a moment and knew it. He wanted to capture the vocal but followed Raj’s direction. He hadn’t intended to play the piano in that song and wasn’t ready, but now that was all he was going to end up doing. For some reason, he suddenly remembered his meds, which he hadn’t taken for two days, going on three. His mother would have had a conniption if she’d known.

  “Ready?” Raj asked, his electrified voice coming through the intercom.

  Ethan nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  Sydney faked a smile. Ethan could tell she was already somewhere else. It was clear she didn’t like what was happening. Her lips were pressed into a line.

  They’d been up for almost twenty-four hours.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tuesday, November 27, 1984

  Ethan hoped day two would be better. It wasn’t.

  They all went to bed after returning from the studio. They slept until six and somehow played their hearts out that night at Tormo. They were already dragging by the time they reached Focus Sound. Their equipment not only seemed heavier, but they seemed to have to move it farther.

  Ethan sang “Never Say Never” to what the rest of the band had recorded the day before. Standing still and singing into a bulbous black foam ball that encased the microphone took some getting used to. He was always moving on stage, holding the mike. In the studio, he felt constrained and, consequently, sounded that way. He couldn’t find his groove. “Never Say Never” came out flat and dreary, missing the emotion of his stage performance. It was as if he were singing someone else’s song instead of his own.

  Midway through the second take, Raj signaled him to stop. Angered, Ethan jumped up and screamed the line he was singing.

  “Whoa,” Raj said through the intercom. “What the fuck was that?”

  Ethan turned.

  Raj beamed. “That’s it!”

  Ethan shook his fist. He knew it too. It felt wonderful.

  It was three thirty in the morning.

&nbs
p; By ten o’clock, nothing else had gone right. It was as if that first take had taken all they had. Raj proposed they give it a rest. They packed up and left.

  They headed to McDonald’s, where Ethan and Sydney rarely ate, but they were so out of sorts they didn’t care. They were hungry, tired, and down. The Golden Arches satisfied at least one of the three feelings.

  Back at the house, Gus helped Ethan move the electric piano inside. Ethan had decided he would practice “The Angel” until it was right. There was something missing when he sang while playing the piano. Maybe it was confidence. All morning, he’d felt off key. By three o’clock, he still wasn’t happy but couldn’t keep his eyes open. He fell into bed. The others had already crashed.

  His sleep was restless and short. By five thirty, he couldn’t stay in bed any longer; he was unable to stop picturing the melody he played with his right hand out of sync with the rhythm he played with his left. Still in his plaid boxers, he went to the Yamaha, plugged in the headphones, and played. Gradually, the song began to feel like his. His heart had to be in sync with the notes he played. The music seemed to come through him—love in play.

  Absorbed in working the song out, he was surprised when Sydney sat down beside him on the shaky bench. He unplugged the headphones.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear—”

  “Try this,” she said. Her soft hand brushed against his. The notes she played fit beautifully.

  His eyes filled. Joy overcame him as tears rolled down his cheeks. He shuddered.

  Sydney turned and looked up at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice sweet and caring.

  “Nothing.” He rubbed his cheeks with the back of his hand, embarrassed. He didn’t know what was wrong, only that her notes completed his.

  Sydney turned, touched his arm, and then moved closer and kissed his cheek.

  “No, we can’t,” he whispered to no avail as Sydney touched his face. She kissed the tears on his cheeks and then his starving lips. His lips melted into hers. A hunger overcame him as he lost himself in her caresses. He couldn’t help but respond, knowing it wasn’t right. Her mouth was hungry and welcomed his. He felt reluctance, confused between love for her and love for her genius. He needed her—her energy, her body. He wanted to feel and hold her. It was as if she had become the music. Their coupling was inevitable, working as they did with the forces of love that fed creativity, one born from the other, creating not only art but also, in essence, who they were. Their attraction to each other was undeniable in spite of his reluctance.