Broken Strings (A Rock Star Novel) (3 page)

“Lunatic!”

“Thank you.”

I look up and down the long
line. We are the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth people in line for tonight’s
show. It’s about ten-thirty or so and the doors won’t open until six, that's if
they open on time. Tonight’s show is set to begin at eight but usually doesn’t
begin until after nine. That means we still have about eight or nine hours to
kill before we get to finally see our heroes.

The band is on their Straight
Jacket tour, the West Coast leg, and after hitting just about every major venue
they’ll head across the pond to the United Kingdom for the next six months
before returning to the east coast where they’ll tour for another four. On the
whole, this their most ambitious tour will end up being nearly a year and a
half long.  Not bad for a band that is still on the rise and have not even
rated a Rolling Stone cover.

That’s pretty damn amazing
for a band that lost its lead guitarist to a drug overdose during the first leg
of the tour. There was a lot of talk about them disbanding or at least putting
off the tour but it would have been financial suicide to cancel a tour of this
magnitude, especially when they were promoting their best- selling record yet.

If they want to get a spot in
the Billboard top 200, they need those record sales. Just as they were thinking
of throwing in the towel, their manager gets a call from none other than
Disturbed’s Dan Donnigan who offers to play twenty dates just to keep the band
from imploding; and the rest is history. They hired a new guitarist several
weeks ago and tonight is the big reveal.

Nobody knows what he looks
like, and since he’s a newcomer protégé, internet searches have turned up
nothing. Just when people thought the loss of founding member and lead
guitarist Myles Ketter, would ruin them, the hubbub over who is the new band
member, has kicked up ticket and record sales to frenzy.

They could end up with a
number one record by the end of the tour if everything goes right. I have every
confidence in my band and their ability to achieve the fame and fortune that
they’re destined for. One day the likes of Metallica will be touring with them
and bands like Spineshank and Shadows Fall will be their opening acts.

I’m staring at my watch like
a hawk. In 75 minutes the DVD of the Denver show will go on sale at Targets all
across America. In special promotion, there are free tickets with backstage
passes concealed in limited DVD packages all across the US. One hundred
fortunate fans will eventually find the tickets and passes and they’ll be able
to go to Fringe show of their choice and meet the band back stage.

The DVD’s are expected to
sell like hotcakes especially now that it’s the only concert video in existence
with the late Myles Ketter. The tickets come in pairs, so when Gabby buys each
of us a DVD there is a chance, however slight, that we will both be going
backstage tonight to meet the band. It will be the penultimate moment in my
life so far. In fact it’ll kind of be downhill for the next sixty or seventy
years. Oh well, I’ll take my chances.

I decide to break out my camera
and take a few more shots. I just have to make sure I have enough battery power
to take pictures of Fringe, then the moment I get home the pics are going up on
my blog, ‘Confessions of a Lunatic.’ All up and down the line as far as I can
see are homemade signs all designed to catch the bands attention so they’ll be
called up on stage to join the band on a song to sing or play with them. Some
of the signs are fairly simple while some of them are complete with flashing
lights and neon lettering.

~~~

The DVD...

It’s almost two before Gabby
finally returns from the closest Target with our DVD’s. The cover is an amazing
shot of the band on stage performing one of their hits. The whole stage and
background is completely blacked out, but each band member is lit by an eerie
light positioned on the floor and shinning up at them. It gives them a ghostly
quality and makes them look even more like the rock gods they really are.

Gabby passes my copy to me
and I’m just about to open it when I hear someone down the line from us begin
to scream. If I didn’t already know the reason for the ruckus, I’d have thought
somebody was in the process of being brutally murdered. Someone’s celebrating
finding the tickets. Damn, fat chance we’ll get one too!

Quickly we both tear into our
packages to confirm that we are in fact just as unlucky as the other million
people who undoubtedly just purchased their DVD today. I decide to go down the
line and take a few pictures of the lucky couple for my blog. That should
actually generate a lot of new traffic. It’s not everybody that's close enough
to a winner to get some pictures. Maybe I can even get my picture taken with
the winners.

I tell Gabby what I’m up to
and head down the line. There’s still a huge gathering around the lucky person.
As I walk up I can hear offers being thrown out from hopefuls. Most of the
offers are from women so the winner has to be guy.

“I’ll show you my tits if you
give me one,” offers a cute blond.

“Hell, you can feel mine,”
shouts another.

“Wanna fuck me?” Shouts still
another girl.

Hell, I can’t compete with
any of those offers. If Gabby were here she’d certainly try but I’m not
prostituting myself just to get backstage at a Fringe show no matter how much I
love the band.

Slowly I push my way through
the crowd and just about fall over when I see the lucky guy. It’s Brand! He
smiles at me and winks.

“I guess I got lucky,” he
says in the understatement of the year as I walk up.

“Yeah, you could say that. So
which of these tempting offers are you going to take?”

His eyes suddenly bug out. I
turn around, following the direction of his gaze. There’s a gorgeous brunette
standing there with her tank top and bra in her hands. She does have a pair of
very shapely breasts. She is definitely one hot Latina. I turn back around
expecting Brand to offer a ticket to her. I really don’t think he’s gonna get a
better offer.

“Come on baby,” she says to
him in a very seductive voice. “You can have these now,” and she gives her
breasts a little shake, “and you can have the rest later.”

And we have a winner… I turn
back around to face Brand. “Well, looks like a good deal to me.”

“Really? I think I’ll pass.
Besides, I’ve already chosen who gets to go with me.”

“Of course, you came with
someone. Hey if you get any good pics, I could really use one for my blog.”

“Why don’t you just use your
own?”

“Mine? Iots of people can get
front row pics; I’m looking for something not just anybody can get.”

“Like I said, you can just
use your own.”

“Huh?” I seem to be missing
something here.

“That is, if you’ll come with
me.”

“What? Are you kidding me?”
Is he giving me a backstage pass?

“I want to take you. I’m not
really that much of a fan, but you are. If anyone should go it’s you June.”

Suddenly I’m feeling very
faint. I mean, I had dreamed…fantasized about this moment the second I heard my
first Fringe song, but I never really believed I would have the chance to meet
the band in person.

“Well?” He’s waiting for my
answer.

The crowd is getting noisier
and even more riled up as they are starting to realize that their chance at a
ticket is rapidly disappearing.

“Brand, you got a lot better
offers on the table here, and I’m not gonna sleep with or even flash you for a
ticket so…”

He looks hurt. “I know that.
It’s not why I’m offering you a ticket June. You should be the one to meet the
band, bottom line. I really want you to go.”

“Bitch!” Someone hisses in my
ear.

Someone tugs on my arm. I
turn around and it’s the topless woman. Up close, she is stunning! She looks at
me and then points to her breasts. “When he gives you your ticket, I’ll make
the same offer to you, these now,” and she gives her breasts a squeeze, “and
the rest later.”

I just about choke. I can’t
believe this is happening.

“Uh…sorry,” I say to her.
“It’s a very attractive offer… but I think I’ll just go with my friend here.”

“Right, you’re gonna fuck him
for it aren’t you?” She says with a nasty look in her eyes. This is really
starting to get ugly here.

Ignoring her remark and turn
back around. “Hey uh Brand, if you really want me to go, you better come with
me. Otherwise these girls are gonna lynch us both.”

He looks around nervously.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

I grab his arm and together
we push our way through an angry crowd and up about thirty feet to where Gabby
is standing wondering what is going on. When we walk up I flash her the ticket
and backstage pass that Brand has slipped me.

Her eyes literally pop out of
her head. “Oh my freaking god, you’re going back stage!” And then she hugs me and
we celebrate quietly.

One last time I give him the
chance to change his mind. “Look Brand, you can give my pass to someone else if
you like. There are some pretty hot girls around here that would love to trade
for the pass.”

To his credit he quickly
shakes his head. “No, I want you to go, so quit trying to give up your pass.”

I give him a quick hug. He
smells really good. Whatever I thought about the guy before is quickly being
replaced with respect and…and, well I really like the guy.

Chapter Three

Backstage

The next six hours fly by and
the atmosphere becomes more and more party-like. All up and down the line there
are clusters of people watching the Denver DVD and psyching themselves up for
the Sacramento show.

Arco Arena is a good place
for a concert. It’s pretty big but it was designed in such a way that there are
not a lot of bad seats in the place. No matter where you sit, you aren’t too
far from the stage. In other words, there are no nosebleed seats.

According to the tickets,
doors open at six. It’s seven and the doors are just now opening. The line is
slowed by Arco Arena guards who insist on searching every single person before
they go in. The first 300 get to watch the show from a special roped off area
in front of the stage.

The stage is big enough that
the three of us should be able to get right up against the stage, hopefully
near the center. Rumor has it that arena guards are not allowing cameras for
the show. I need my camera. Not to worry though, this isn’t my first show. I
have a light jacket that I’m wearing so I take it off. I wad it up around my camera
and when I step up to be searched I hold my arms out away from my sides with my
wadded up coat and camera clutched in my right hand.

They quickly pat down
everything without bothering to ask me to open up my hand. Kewl, I’m home free.
Five minutes later Gabby, Brand, and I are right up against the stage just off
from the center. This is going to be a fantastic show.

I can feel my heart start to
pound and my breath quicken. I can hardly stop moving. It’s like my feet have a
mind of their own. They’re playing some metal mix over the speakers so each
time a song starts playing my feet start moving, then my knees, hips,
shoulders, arms and head. I can’t help it. I’m a typical girl. I love music and
I love to dance. Damn this is gonna be the best night of my life! I can feel it
in my bones.

“Excited much?” Asks Brand in
between songs.

“This is the best night of my
life!” I confess.

“Really? You don’t get out
much do you?”

“Hey I’m a Lunatic. This is
what I live for.”

“You do realize I’m gonna
interview their new guy and try to find out what his story is, you know, find
any dirt. If not I’ll just find someone else, but you have to admit, this is a
chance of a lifetime for me. No way am I gonna be able to get close enough to
any other rock star to pick their brains.”

“Yeah, I kinda forgot about
that; Enemy!”

“This is my career June, I
mean this could really fast track me to the big time like it did Hector Oh. I
work nights now at Alta Bates Medical Center as a security guard and I hate it.
This could be my time to really become a writer and to write something that
really matters.

I’m having a little bit of a
hard time swallowing all this. How is ruining a guy’s career
writing
something that matters
?

“Hey uh… how exactly is
ruining some guy's career writing something that matters?” I ask.

“I’m a journalist. I write
the truth, whatever it turns out to be. If this guy is clean I got no story
here and I’ll move on. I got tickets to see Disturbed in LA next month, and
Spineshank a week later. Somewhere there’s a story about a guitar player that’s
just waiting to be written and I’m gonna be the guy to do it. I just hope its
tonight though. I really hate my day job.”

“Wow…well I do hope you get
your dream job but I don’t think it’s right if you gotta trash someone else’s
career to make your own.”

“But I’m not trashing
anyone’s career. If the guy is into some shit, I’m just here to report it.
Maybe if he’s like into drugs it will be the stimulus that will motivate him to
change his life.”

“Oh come on, you expect me to
believe you're this noble person here to…to promote change through honest
trashing…I mean, reporting on someone’s life?”

“Hey I think giving you the
backstage pass counts for something yeah?”

“You certainly sacrificed
quite a bit,” I reply thinking of the topless girl.

“Hell yes, I could be in here
somewhere…” he pauses as he looks around. “Okay in a bathroom somewhere having
hot sex with a stranger. What could be better than that?”

“My friendship?”

“Obviously I valued that more
or I’d… never mind.”

“Thank you!” Now every time I
look at him I'll be reminded of the girl with incredible boobs. That’s sure to
keep our friendship forever stuck in the friend zone.

We chit chat back and forth
between songs for a little while longer until the lights dim. At first the
crowd is screaming at the tops of their lungs, but after five minutes and no
sign of the band, a silence falls over the arena. If not for camera phones and
light sticks it would be pitch black in here.

Suddenly several things
happen at once. There’s a huge explosion and about twenty flash pots that are
lining the front of the stage go off. I am so close I can feel the heat on my
face. The sparks must extend a good thirty feet up. The very moment the flash
pots go, Fringe’s new lead guitarist hits the first chord on
Straight Jacket
and I can feel that heavy grinding rhythm in my chest.

When you hear the music on
your iPod, it’s so one dimensional. When you’re at a Fringe concert and you
feel the music in your body, it’s like going from a black and white movie to a
3D movie in one electrifying split second.

I’m standing here front and
center and my body is literally vibrating with each chord struck on the new
guy’s guitar. After 3 revolutions of the same grinding riff, Marcus and Lance
join in with their drums and bass guitar and it’s like I have a second and
third heart thumping in my chest. Without thinking I lay my hand on my chest. I
really can feel my sternum and ribs vibrating to the rhythm of the song.

They’re purposely keeping the
lights extra low on the new guitarist which just adds to the mystery and makes
me want to see him all that much more. I look over at Gabby and she’s screaming
something I can’t even begin to hear.

Her face has been transformed
from her normal bored expression to a manic, hedonistic Fringe worshiper;
probably just like mine is. I grab Gabby’s head and pull her face to my ear so
I can hear what she’s saying, but then her mouth is so close to my ear it just
distorts all to hell and I can’t make out a thing.

I give up trying to hear my
best friend and take a look around myself. There’s not a person in the arena
that is not on their feet moving in unison. If only this energy could be
harnessed, we could really make a dent on our country’s dependence on oil.

Metal has such a frenetic
energy to it, you can’t not move. Your body does it whether you want it to or
not. Listening to
Straight Jacket
and the next 14 songs I feel like I’m
standing in the surf on some beach and wave after wave is crashing over me and
scrambling my brain. No wonder I always feel so disoriented after a show.

The next 100 minutes fly by and
before I know it, it’s the second encore and they’re playing
Solitary
.
This really is the end this time and normally I would start coming down, but
with the prospect of meeting the band so close; I can feel myself getting jacked
up again. I am about to have the most memorable encounter in my life. I look
over to my left and Brand is standing there with his backstage pass around his
neck; it’s go time!

Having been to dozens of
shows now, I know how to find the backstage entrance even if I have never been in
this particular venue. All you have to do is follow the line of cute girls and
you’ll find the door, along with a guard whose task is to only let the hot
girls back, and the occasional cool guy.

Other than that, unless you
have a backstage pass like the one around my neck, you don’t have a ghost of a
chance of meeting the band. We are about fifty Lunatics back and waiting
anxiously for our turn. As I look around I can’t help but get this feeling
knowing that
I
am going to get in no matter what, and most of these
girls will not. That’s power!

As we get within about a
dozen hopefuls, my heart really starts to pound. My palms are sweating and I’m
feeling flushed. I’m beginning to think maybe I should have taken a puff of one
of the many joints that were passed my way. I’m pretty sure I’d feel a hell of
a lot better than I feel right now.

Brand hooks his arm in mine.
“We’re almost in,” he says. Then he pulls a pen out of his pocket and clips it
to the pocket in his shirt.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“What do you think it is?”

“It’s either a ‘nerd badge’
or a secret video camera.”

He looks down at himself. “I
guess it does look a bit nerdy doesn’t it? I just don’t want to have to try and
remember everything, so this thing will capture 3 hours of streaming video for
me. When I get home I put it in the docking station next to my laptop and push
a single button and it instantly gets uploaded to my computer. Pretty cool
huh?”

“Okay…”

“Then I’ll just type it up at
my own pace and hopefully I get some good information ‘cause I’m pretty sure I
don’t rate cool enough to get in on my own accord.”

“No comment.”

“Couldn’t you at least have
disagreed with me? Never mind. We go in together, we leave together; deal?”

“Deal.” I say.

I certainly don’t want to be
back here alone with no one watching my back. Backstage parties have a way of
getting pretty out of control and I don’t want to regret this. I check my own camera.
Uh oh…it’s not turning on. How could I have not checked the charge before
coming here? Shit! My one chance in a lifetime to get really good pics for the
blog and my camera dies on me. Maybe Brand will let me use some of his footage.

The trio of girls directly in
front of us is denied. Their eyes bug out when they see the passes around our
necks as they pass by.

“How much?-” One of the
skanks asks.

“Forget it,” we both chime in
simultaneously.

We flash the door guard our
passes and he opens the door with alacrity. I can hardly believe this. As we
walk down the hall, sounds of a party in progress drifts our way.

“Are you ready for this,
Lunatic?” Brand asks.

“Are you, Enemy?” I reply.

He ignores my enemy comment.
“Not even close.”

“Well you’re in good company
‘cause I’m terrified.”

Another twenty feet brings us
to another door guarded by a guy so big he has me wondering if he can even fit
through the door he is tasked with guarding. We flash our passes and he opens
the door.

We are definitely not in
Kansas anymore.  As I step into the room my eyes struggle to take in
everything. First thing I notice is a group of girls slow dancing to the sounds
of an acoustic guitar. Something about the girls lazy seductive movements and
their glassy blank stares makes me think of sedatives and there’s really only
one I can think of that would be in this room; heroin.

You could put on a speed
metal CD and these girls wouldn’t be able to change their tempo even if they
wanted to. The dim lighting…actually the lighting isn’t dim at all. There’s
just too much smoke in the air for the lights to do much good. The strong
distinctive smell of marijuana permeates the entire room.

I give myself about three
minutes before I get a contact high; the smoke is that thick. Leaning up
against a wall are two girls making out while some guy is recording them on his
camera phone.

The music seems to be coming
from some guy I don’t recognize. He’s perched on a stool swaying dangerously.
I’ll give him five minutes before his ass is on the floor. He’s not in the
band, but he’s definitely got Hammers acoustic guitar. I can’t tell if the
guy’s a horrible musician or the guitar is just out of tune. The fact that he
can’t keep a rhythm doesn’t seem to matter to the dancing girls.

On the far side of the room
three figures, Hammer, Marcus, and Lance, are lounging on a plush couch
drinking a variety of drinks. The new guy is nowhere to be seen. Hammer and
Marcus are passing back and forth what I can only assume is a joint.

The three guys are festooned
with scantily clad girls and I can’t help but wondering something. I went up
and down the line, and I pretty much know the hardcore Lunatics, and nobody was
wearing anything like these girls have on. Either they changed somewhere, or
these girls are the paid entertainment.

There’s a girl on either side
of Hammer and Marcus and they cannot keep their hands to themselves. Marcus is
pretty much lost in his own trip and is ignoring them but Hammer’s got his hand
under the micro mini of one girl who looks to be in high school. She doesn’t
seem to mind his explorations. Lance is making out with two girls at once and
sharing a joint with them as well.

I guess this is the epitome
of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Why did I expect anything else? There are some
guys here too; probably guitar players or drummers and every so often one will
try to engage the interest of one of the guys from the band but it’s a losing
battle; almost-naked girls win out every time. Suddenly I feel overdressed.