Born to Rock Page 8

  We stashed them on an equipment truck. “You’ll pick up the tricks of traveling light,” he said kindly. “Did you know most bands use disposable underwear? They get onstage, sweat it up, and chuck it. No time for laundry on the road.”

  “Thanks, Bernie.” I really meant it. Here he was, minutes away from his band’s official comeback, taking the time to make me feel welcome. Bio-dad might have been scary and weird, but at least bio-cousin was a nice guy.

  I found a spot in the wings and perched on a stack of amplifiers beside a music critic from the L.A. Times. The crowd was getting restless again. It was almost midnight, and everyone knew what was coming next.

  When the stage lights finally went out, the clamor of anticipation drowned out the introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen—” Yeah, right. “Lockjaw recording artists—Purge!”

  It was the last thing I heard clearly for about six days. The roar of approval from forty thousand throats came in perfect unison with a guitar chord so distorted, so loud that I felt it below the gum line. The drumbeats were jackhammers, one in each ear. The vibration of the bass went right to my innards and out the other side of me.

  I didn’t like this kind of music. I didn’t even think it was music. Yet I could tell that Lethal Injection had been a bunch of kids fooling around with instruments in someone’s garage compared with the authority and power of Neb Nezzer, Zach Ratzenburger, and Max Plank.

  It almost slipped my mind that there was another part of Purge.

  And then the wrath of the gods was unleashed on that stage. The reaction of the audience to seeing King Maggot after sixteen long years was so explosive that I thought the former racetrack might tear itself loose from the crust of the earth and blast off into space.

  I’d heard the CD; I’d studied the pictures, read the accounts of shows Purge had put on in their heyday. It was all nothing in the face of the spectacle that now assaulted my eyes and ears. I’d expected the noise and the seething onslaught of King’s lyrics. But in a million years I couldn’t have imagined it being so devastating. Not good, but—impressive.

  You could say it was god-awful, but you couldn’t say nothing much was happening here.

  “No life on Mars, or so they say,

  But we’ll destroy it anyway,

  Make it clean for the USA,

  And how ’bout Venus next…okay!”

  As King bawled their signature anthem, forty thousand throats screamed along with him:

  “Bomb Mars now! Nuke Mars now!

  Just you wait and see,

  Bomb Mars now! Nuke Mars now!

  The new diplomacy…”

  I looked over at the music critic from the L.A. Times. She wasn’t making notes. She was weeping. Her eyes never left the figure that rampaged across the stage.

  Neither did mine. The thought that this was my father, that I shared an earlobe and DNA with this force of nature, made me dizzy. That, plus the fact that it was well after midnight, East Coast time, and I’d first arrived at JFK airport at five-thirty A.M. But that was a small detail, and three thousand miles was a modest commute, to arrive at this point—the actualization of my quest for the mystery factor inside Leo Caraway. For there was no doubt that I was witnessing, on that stage, McMurphy in its purest form.

  I’d never understood how my staid, respectable mother could have been taken in by a punk rocker. Now it was as obvious as Isaac Newton and the apple: this guy had gravity. He was an irresistible force.

  Unlike Lethal Injection, Purge didn’t feel the need to curse out the audience all that much. King started off on a couple of political rants, but every time he opened his mouth, the brouhaha of agreement and adulation was so instantaneous and so loud that he couldn’t be heard. It didn’t really matter. His issues weren’t exactly cutting edge. I heard him mention Grenada in there somewhere, which I think was some mini-war back in the ’80s that lasted about fifteen seconds.

  That aside, it didn’t seem that Purge had lost any steam during their sixteen-year hiatus. Potbellies and receding Mohawks notwithstanding, they were still the angriest band in America, capable of raising the roof in a place that didn’t even have one.

  The grand finale was “I Wanna Be Your Stalker,” which, according to Melinda, had been the last song they’d recorded before the breakup.

  Melinda. The thought of her brought a strange smile to my lips. God, she should see this! She’d probably be crying harder than the reporter, whose notebook was now blue-stained pulp.

  Even I could tell that the band was building to a shattering crescendo. King Maggot took a running leap off the edge of the stage and launched himself spread-eagle into the frenzied crowd. Drummer Max Plank pulled off a cymbal and Frisbee-ed it into a lighting array, taking out a three-thousand-watt flood in a shower of sparks. Zach Ratzenburger ripped all the strings off his electric bass, producing a squeal of feedback that was close to unbearable.

  And Neb Nezzer hurled himself straight up in the air in his signature scissor-kick, landing on the stage in a full split.

  I watched him, bug-eyed, counting off the seconds.

  He didn’t get up.

  [13]

  ONE OF THE LESSER-KNOWN RESPONSIBILITIES of a roadie—it was my job to ride in the ambulance with Neb, who was in a lot of pain, and not taking it well.

  “Just relax, sir,” soothed the paramedic. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened!” roared Neb, temporarily the angriest member of Purge. “I’m dying, and somebody’s asking me stupid questions! That’s what happened!”

  I tried to be helpful. “He did a split and couldn’t get up. I’m pretty sure he has a bad back.”

  “It’s not my back, it’s my crotch!” he howled. His agonized eyes focused on me for the first time. “Who the hell are you? Do you work for me?”

  The paramedic prodded Neb’s abdomen and got a caterwaul of protest for his trouble. “You do that again,” the patient promised, “you’re a dead man!”

  “Sir, I have to find out what’s wrong with you.”

  “Are you deaf?” Neb bellowed. “It’s my crotch! It’s broken! Sprained! Whatever!”

  In emergency, the doctors discovered that Neb had been right all along. The problem really was his crotch. More specifically, somewhere during the leap/kick/split, the guitarist had popped a hernia that had become strangulated.

  “But I used to do this all the time!” Neb protested. “It was my trademark back in the eighties!”

  The doctor smiled patiently. “How many of us can still do all the things we did back in the eighties?”

  While Neb was rushed into the operating room, I called the only number I had—Bernie McMurphy’s cell.

  “This better be good!” was his salutation.

  “It’s Leo.” My voice was quavering. “Listen, Neb has a strangulated hernia. He just went into surgery.”

  There was dead silence, during which I heard music and laughing voices.

  “Are you listening? Neb is having an operation. They’re doing it this minute!”

  “I’m thinking!” Bernie snapped. “A hernia. That’s nothing, right? He’s okay to go to San Francisco tomorrow?”

  “It’s strangulated!” I exclaimed. “The doctor says it’ll take him weeks to recover.”

  A string of curses greeted this revelation. “First day of the tour, and we’ve got no guitarist. Why me?”

  “It isn’t you,” I said reproachfully. “It’s Neb.”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay, sit tight. I’m sending Cam over to pick you up. I’d come myself, but I’ve got to find a replacement guitarist, and they’re all here at the party.”

  “Party?” I repeated. “Neb was carted away by ambulance, and you’re partying?”

  “You’ve got to understand, Cuz, in this gig, parties are like meetings. It’s where a lot of business gets done.” There was some feminine giggling at very close range, and Bernie mumbled, “Not now, babe. I gotta go.”

  “Is King at
the party too?” I asked.

  “He’s not here.” I couldn’t tell if it was true or a manager’s automatic reflex to protect his star. “Just keep an eye out for Cam. He’ll be there soon. And listen, kid—good job. You stuck by Neb when he needed you most.”

  I was the only one.

  Actually, I got to stick by Neb a lot longer than that, because Cam didn’t show up. I was there when they wheeled Neb out of recovery at three A.M. and established him in his own room. I was there when his eyelids fluttered open, and I heard his first words: “Do I know you?”

  By five A.M., I was back in the waiting area at emergency. Cam had abandoned me, but I didn’t care. I was finally asleep after twenty-seven frenetic, stress-packed hours, and it was plenty sweet.

  A deluge of ice-cold beer soaked my face and chest, and shocked me awake. I jolted upward, arms and legs flailing. “Rise and shine, new guy. Been waiting long?”

  Cam.

  “Thanks to you,” I told him.

  He led me out to the parking lot to an equipment van full of roadies and girls. My anger dissipated enough for me to realize that they’d all been drinking since the show had ended more than four hours ago.

  “I’ll drive,” I said firmly.

  “You’re the boss, Hoss,” Cam sang out, dumping more beer, this time onto my shoes. But I stood my ground until he gave me the keys.

  We drove around for a long time because nobody could remember where the Hilton was. I got directions at a gas station, and that’s where we lost the girls. They went for frittatas at the Mexican diner across the street.

  Finally, we found the hotel, and I dragged up to my room. Who dragged along with me? Cam, my roommate. Lucky me. At least my luggage was there, miracle of miracles.

  Cam invited the others to come along, and I had to let them because I was the idiot who stopped for directions and cost them the girls.

  “Well, okay,” I said, “but I’m going to sleep.”

  They were loud and obnoxious, and pelted me with cashews from the minibar. I tried to be good-natured about it. Who wants to start something with all his coworkers on the very first day? I was caught between a rock and a hard place. What happened right now could set the tone for the whole summer. They were bigger than me, adults to my seventeen, worldly to my naive, and there were four of them and only one of me.

  But when I saw Cam shaking up a fresh can of Budweiser, it was too much. I probably could have controlled myself. McMurphy, however, was another story.

  My foot snapped up and booted the can out of his hand and across the room. “No more beer showers!” I snarled. “I’ve been taking your crap all night, and it ends here! I may be the new guy and the kid, but if you don’t lay off, I swear to God I’ll find a way to make you pay!”

  I looked at their faces and knew I’d just made a big mistake. I wasn’t sure exactly what they’d do to me, but this was about to get ugly.

  And then there was a knock at the door.

  “Later!” snapped Cam.

  “Leo?”

  Never did I think I’d be so glad to hear the voice of King Maggot. The mood changed in a heartbeat as all those Neanderthals broke their necks to let the boss inside.

  King walked in, ignoring everybody else, and taking note of the sight I must have presented, having last seen to my grooming thirty hours earlier in Connecticut.

  “You look terrible.” A fine greeting from my bio-dad, for whom I’d crossed the country.

  “I just got here,” I explained.

  He looked amazed. “What—now?”

  “Bernie sent me to the hospital with Neb. You heard he’s off the tour, right?”

  He shrugged like I’d just told him we were out of Kleenex. “I came to see if you wanted to do breakfast. But I guess you’d better get some sleep.” He turned back to the door and began to stroll out the way he’d strolled in. To the room in general, he said, “You guys are getting along okay, right?”

  It was a question, an order, and a threat all rolled into one.

  After a silent moment, I replied, “Oh, yeah, they’re showing me the ropes.”

  “Good, because I promised I’d look out for you.” And he was gone.

  A big hulk I came to know as Julius spoke first. “Welcome aboard, kid. Good working with you.”

  I could have ratted them out, and they all knew it. I think I made some points there.

  But not with Cam. When we were alone in the room, he looked at me and growled, “Who’s King to you? Your daddy?”

  I didn’t say a word. I just flashed him my friendliest smile and crawled into bed, burrowing my McMurphy ear deep into the pillow.

  [14]

  MY NEWFOUND FRIENDS, THE ROADIES, were driving to San Francisco with the equipment trucks. King invited me to fly up with the band on Neb’s ticket, so we’d have a chance to spend some time together.

  And we did. In first class, no less. But it wasn’t exactly quality time. The life of a rock band on tour was like boot camp. There were no thirty-mile hikes or cleaning the toilet with your toothbrush. But every day was kind of an obstacle course.

  Autographs to sign in the hotel lobby; sharing the limo ride with an interviewer. There was always something to suck up every spare minute. When we got to the airport, Max was waiting for us with an enormous poodle on a leash.

  “What the hell is that doing here?” Bernie demanded.

  “He’s coming with us,” the drummer said, and you could tell by his tone that there was more to the story.

  The manager was horrified. “You can’t take a dog on tour!”

  “I got stuck with him,” Max explained. “Penelope dumped him with the desk clerk at six A.M. The proctologist is taking her to Rio for three weeks.”

  “Well, she’s got to change her plans!” Bernie exploded.

  “She’s already gone!” cried Max. “Don’t you get it? This was her plan—to stick me with Llama because she’s pissed about the divorce.”

  “Find a kennel,” Bernie ordered. “There are no poodles in punk. It doesn’t fit the image.”

  Max didn’t even hear him. “A hundred grand to redo the kitchen in a house I’m not even going to be allowed to live in anymore. Tiffany’s shopping for grad schools. I’m going to be on the street!”

  But, stressed as he was, Max dug in his heels and threatened to boycott the tour. With Neb already on ice, Purge couldn’t afford to lose another original member. Pretty soon, Llama was being crammed into an animal carrier and loaded with the luggage. He howled all the way up the conveyor belt. As a matter of fact, we could still hear him in the belly of the plane, complaining throughout the trip.

  “It could have been worse,” was King’s only comment. “He could have brought Penelope. She’s louder.”

  We finally got airborne, but the business didn’t end as LAX fell away beneath us. The minute the seat belt sign went off, Bernie took the floor.

  “Okay, listen up. Pete Vukovich of the Stem Cells has agreed to stand in for Neb. He says he knows our stuff. I’ve arranged for rehearsal time tonight to bring him up to speed.” He cleared his throat carefully. “What happened to Neb—it’s too bad, but let it be a lesson to us. We’re not twenty-five anymore. We’ve got to put on a good show, and do what we do. But let’s know our limitations. We’re none of us as young as we’d like to be.” He grinned at me. “Except for Leo.”

  He turned to his bassist, who was double-fisting doughnuts from the hospitality cart. “And try to go easy on the eating, will you, Zach?”

  Zach was offended. “You’re our manager, not our mother.”

  “I speak up for the interests of this band,” Bernie said righteously. “Purge is a lean and hungry look. You’re pushing the outer limits of that.”

  “Hey, I’m starving myself on the Richmond Hill diet—”

  “Looks more like the Krispy Kreme diet,” put in Max.

  Zach waved one of his doughnuts in the air. “I budgeted for this. I was entitled to half a grapefruit for breakfast
, and I skipped my carrot sticks from last night.”

  “That’s some budget you’ve got there,” King observed. “Like saving a nickel a week to buy a Ferrari.”

  “Don’t take it so personally,” Bernie told Zach. “Use common sense. That applies to all of us. Now, let’s go over the media appearances for San Francisco….”

  When all that was finally done, I sat waiting for the father-son chat to begin. It never did. I cast a sideways glance at my bio-dad. He had his headphones on, and was as distant from me as he’d ever been.

  Protestors surrounded the entrance to our San Francisco hotel.

  It shook me up—two hundred sign-waving citizens—but King thought it was funny. “San Francisco,” he commented. “This town never fails to turn up a few nut-jobs.”

  “But why are they bothering a band that hasn’t recorded an album in sixteen years?” I asked him. “What about rap or something recent?”

  King shrugged. “These people don’t listen to music. They only know what The O’Reilly Factor tells them to hate.”

  The nut-jobs du jour were a group who called themselves the Society of Decency, or SOD for short. Their signs bore messages like MAGGOT IS AN INSECT and PURGE SHOULD BE PURGED.

  As we walked past them from the limo to the hotel, they yelled and chanted at us. Some were singing hymns. We weren’t in any danger. There were policemen keeping them behind barriers. But it was kind of spooky to have total strangers so mad at you. Yet it was the only time since I’d met King that I really had a sense that he was enjoying himself. He leaned into the crowd and uttered a Hannibal Lecter–like snake hiss that had people jumping backward for their lives.

  A sign that read NEZZER = SATAN had a special attraction for Bernie. “Satan won’t be coming today,” he assured the woman, who was regarding him with distaste. “He has a hernia.”