Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (32 page)

But after all the fancy accounting, which involved a
Byzantine schedule of retailer discounts, packaging costs, “free goods,”
mysteriously discounted royalty rates, and the split with the producer, a new
artist might earn sixty-six cents for each CD sold and about forty-four cents
on each cassette sold at retail outlets.
 
And that’s before the lawyers, managers, agents, and the government took
their cuts of the pie, ultimately leaving the artist with little more than a
bewildered expression.

As a guide, consider this example: a well known country
artist’s recent debut record sold 500,000 units, thereby grossing $4 million
for the label.
 
Of that, the artist
earned less than $200,000, all of which was applied against his advance of
$350,000, leaving the artist still in the hole to the tune of $150,000.
 
Most young artists lucky enough to have a
gold record were genuinely surprised to discover they were in such serious debt
after becoming so famous.
 
But Eddie
wasn’t most young artists.
 
Thanks to his
astute marketing scheme, a couple of good songs, and the negotiating skills of
Herron & Peavy, he had a quarter million in the bank, a record that hadn’t
even been released, and nothing to recoup before seeing royalties.

“Where should we start?” Eddie asked.
 
“Mechanical and songwriting
royalties?
 
Record
sales?
 
Touring?
 
Merchandising?”

“How about endorsements?”
Megan
said.
 
“What do you
think,
Gibson guitars?”

Eddie shook his head.
 
“Nah, I’m thinking Internet companies.
 
I bet we could get a hundred K a year endorsing E-Bay or something like
that.”

“A hundred thousand?”
 
Megan sounded disappointed.
 
“Eddie, you gotta start using bigger
numbers.
 
You gotta be more
positive!
 
Plus, think about it, those
dot.com people have so much more money than good sense.
 
Soon as you’ve got a number one single, I bet
you can get a million dollar endorsement.”
 
Megan keyed in 1,000,000.00 on the calculator.

Eddie laughed and drained his beer.
 
“Talk about your easy money.”
 
He burped.
 
“Okay, let’s do mechanicals next.”
 
He leaned over and whispered in Megan’s ear.
 
“Thanks to our little bidding war, we’ll earn
a mechanical royalty rate of about ten cents for every song on every copy of
the CD we sell.”
 
He burped again.
 
“Oh, sorry.”
 
He twisted up part of the sheet and stuck it
in Megan’s ear.

“Oh, how gallant.”
 
She sat there with arms folded as Eddie dried
her ear.
 
“You
know,
most guys?
 
They’ll just belch in your
ear and think they’re done.”
 
She pointed
her finger at the tip of Eddie’s nose.
 
“But you…”

“Yes, I know, I’m a full service sort of guy.”
 
He untwisted the sheet and smoothed it onto
the bed.
 
“Now, where were we?
 
Ahh, yes, mechanical
royalties at ten cents a song.
 
But of course I have to split each of those dimes fifty-fifty with my
publisher.”
 
Now Eddie sounded
disappointed.

“Hey,” Megan said in her upbeat tone, “that’s the cost of
doing business.”

“You’re right,” Eddie said as he pulled another beer from
the six
pack
.
 
“You’re totally right.”
 
He
gestured at the calculator.
 
“So put
us
in for a nickel per song and we’ll be happy about it.”

Encouraged by Eddie’s use of the word ‘we,’ Megan keyed in
.05 on the calculator.
 
“Okay, what’s a
gold record,” she asked, “five hundred thousand units?”
 
Megan thought about that for a moment.
 
“Nah, that’s not enough.
 
Let’s say it goes platinum, okay?
 
So let’s see…”
 
Megan keyed in the new numbers.
 
“. .
.five
cents
times eleven songs times a million equals…
Woo-hoo!”
 
Megan kicked her bare legs up and down on the
bed.
 
“Five hundred
fifty thousand dollars.
 
Plus the
million from the dot.com people, plus the two-fifty non-recoupable advance brings
us up to a million eight.”
 
She clapped
her hands together.
 
“This is fun.
 
What’s next?”

Eddie looked down at the calculator poised between Megan’s
ivory thighs.
 
“I’m gonna have to do an
audit on you pretty soon,” he said.

“First things first,” Megan said.
 
“Let’s take a look at touring income.”

Eddie reached to the side of the bed, grabbed his Gibson,
and started playing.
 
“On the road again…”
  
As Eddie did his warbling
impression of Willie Nelson, Megan went through a series of calculations based
on highly inflated estimates of income from touring, publishing, merchandising,
songwriting, and co-producing deals.

When she had added everything she could think of, Megan
turned to Eddie, who still had his guitar in his lap.
 
“
A drum roll
please,” she said.
 
Eddie obliged on the
soundboard of the guitar.
 
Megan made a
drama out of hitting the calculator’s ‘total’ button,
then
she leaned close to read the number.
 
“Holy eight hundred pound Jesus!”
 
She showed Eddie the calculator.
 
“Sixteen billion dollars
and forty-two cents!”

Eddie looked closer.
 
“I think you hit an extra zero or something.”
 
Laughing, Eddie flopped back into the pillows
and reflected on how well his life was turning out.
 
It occurred to him that his one-of-a-kind
record deal was exactly the sort of thing Jimmy would want to put in the
biography.
 
Eddie’s expression changed
from contentment to curiosity as he realized how long it had been since he’d
spoken to Jimmy.
 
Then he realized he’d
never given Jimmy his new, unlisted, number.
 
But what could he do now?
 
Call
Jimmy and say, “Hi, how’s the book going?
 
Thought you’d want to know I just signed a fantastic deal with Big World
Records.
 
Oh, and by the way, I’ve got my
hands in Megan’s pink panties and she sends her best.”
 
He looked at Megan and for a moment thought
about asking if she’d talked to Jimmy lately.
 
But there was something peaceful about her expression that stopped him.

Megan looked like she was lost in a dream.
 
She was still toying with the calculator,
trying to figure what her cut of the total might be if she managed to secure
the position as the second Mrs. Eddie Long.
 
She made a mental note to find out if Tennessee
was a community property state and, if not, how she might get Eddie to move to
one.
 
She turned to look at him.
 
“Have you ever thought about living in California?”

47.

Jimmy made it from Hinchcliff to the casino in Vicksburg
in just
under
three hours, arriving just as Foghat hit
the stage.
 
The show was everything he expected,
except that the band consisted of something less than the original line up,
owing to the untimely death of ‘Lonesome’ Dave Peverett.
 
Actually this ‘Foghat’ turned out to be
fronted by a guy who had played cowbell on one song on the “
High on the Hog”
album.
 
He had licensed the rights to the band’s name
and had been playing around the country for several years without anyone
noticing that only one of the band members was over the age of 30.
 
Of course that really wasn’t surprising when
you figure the only people interested in seeing Foghat now had to be so stoned
that they wouldn’t have been able to do the math.
 
But the upside was that compared to Foghat’s
‘77 live album, these guys were fabulous.
 
Jimmy enjoyed the free show, took his notes,
then
headed back to Jackson.

He was back at his apartment by eleven and slugged out the
review in less than an hour.
 
He e-mailed
it to the editor who had hired him,
then
he poured
himself a big drink and crashed on the sofa.
 
He was hoping just to drift off to sleep but a question had been nagging
at him ever since he left Quitman County,
plus he couldn’t get ‘Slow Ride’ out of his head.
 
Jimmy finally surrendered.
 
He sat up and looked at the clock.
 
He knew someone who could answer his question
but he didn’t know if he should call this late.
 
Screw it, he thought, she shouldn’t have become a doctor if she didn’t
want to get paged late at night.

Five minutes later Jimmy’s phone rang.
 
He picked up.
 
“Helllloooo, Dr. Glick.”

“Jimmy?
 
What are you doing
calling so late?”

“Sorry Cris, I just—”

“Wait, lemme guess.
 
You just got back from covering some lame concert where you had too much
to drink, and you want to talk dirty again.”

Jimmy paused.
 
“Boy,
one lapse in judgement and you’re labeled for life.
 
I wish you’d let that go.”

“Can’t,” she said with a smile in her voice.
 
“It’s too much fun.”
 

“Still with the cheap shots, huh?”

“I know, I should be ashamed, but you’re so darn cute when
you squirm.
 
Are you squirming?”

Cris and Jimmy had dated off and on during high school.
 
They’d drifted apart during college, but
reconnected one night a few years later when they ran into each other at Hal
and Mal’s during Christmas vacation.
 
The
following week, after covering a B.J. Thomas show at one of the casinos, Jimmy,
slightly toasted, called to invite himself over to Cris’s apartment for a late
night get-together.
 
When she declined,
he tried steering her toward a little smutty conversation.
 
Cris told him to call her back when he was
sober then hung up.
 
He called the next
day to apologize.
 
She accepted.
 
But she still enjoyed giving him grief about
it.

“You know it doesn’t speak well of you that you still hold
that over my head,” Jimmy said, “but I’ll let it go since I need a favor.”

“Get over it,” Cris said.
 
“What do you need?”

“I need you to interpret a coroner’s report … for
something I’m writing.”

“Really?”
 
She sounded surprised.
 
“Sounds like you’ve wandered off the old
entertainment trail, Jimmy.
 
What’re you
working on?”

Jimmy told her about Eddie’s biography and Tammy’s
death.
 
“So can I fax it over?”

“Sure.
 
Give me half
an hour,” Cris said.
 
“I’ll meet you in
the cafeteria on the third floor.”

48.

Jimmy faxed the coroner’s report,
then
left immediately for the hospital.
 
It was
only a five minute drive from his apartment but, by Jimmy’s reckoning, the
University
of
Mississippi Medical Center was one of
the largest medical facilities in the universe.
 
It was a sprawling, ponderous puzzle of tedious architecture and Jimmy
knew he’d need at least twenty-five minutes to find the particular third floor
and cafeteria Cris was talking about.

Dr. Glick was finishing a cup of coffee when Jimmy burst
through the door ten minutes late.
 
“Sorry,” he said, “they’ve added a few new wings since the last time I
was here.”
 
He sat down across from his
old flame.
 
She was still the beauty with
the curly reddish brown hair he’d had such a crush on, except now she was an MD
with a husband and two children, so he had to remember not to make goo-goo into
her brown eyes the way he used to.
 
He
leaned toward her.
 
“Just between you and
me,” he said, “how many patients go missing in this maze every year?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”
 
She smiled.

Jimmy smiled back.
 
“Have I ever told you how great you look in scrubs?”

Dr. Glick clicked her fingernails on the coroner’s
report.
 
“Let’s try and focus.
 
I’ve got real work to do.”

“Right.
 
So, what’s the answer?”

“Well, actually, you asked the wrong question,” she
said.
 
“People who show the sort of
adverse response to MSG that you’re thinking of aren’t having an allergic
reaction.
 
They’re showing
an intolerance
.
 
By
that I mean it doesn’t trigger a histamine cascade or anything like that.
 
The common reaction is what’s known in the
literature as ‘Chinese restaurant syndrome.’”

“Get out.”

“It’s also known as MSG symptom complex, but how much fun is
that?”
 
Dr. Glick looked at her
watch.
 
“All right, I’ve got time for the
short course on MSG intolerance versus your run-of-the-mill allergic reaction,
so take notes.
 
Monosodium glutamate is
the sodium salt of glutamic acid, which is a form of amino acid, plus a form of
glutamate, okay?
 
It’s found naturally in
the human body and in things like cheese, milk, meat, peas, and mushrooms.”

Jimmy pretended to hit his Jeopardy buzzer.
 
“What are protein-containing
foods?
 
I’ll take medical mumbo-jumbo for
two hundred, Alex.”

Dr. Glick rolled her eyes sweetly then proceeded to talk for
five minutes about glutamate in its ‘free’ form, lymphocytes, antibodies,
antigens, and immunoglobulin E, followed by another five minutes on hydrolyzed
proteins, protein hydrolysates, and enzymatically treated proteins which
contain salts of free amino acids, like glutamate.

Finally Jimmy held up his hand to stop her.
 
“You are truly amazing,” he said.
 
“How do you keep all that stuff from spilling
out of your head and staining your shirt?
 
And more importantly, how can you possibly say all that without
answering my question?
 
That’s what I
really want to know.”